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Every summer, millions of young Chinese graduate from the country’s increasingly strong network of four-year universities. But lately, many can’t find a good job once they leave school, so they end up becoming delivery drivers, livestreamers and even “professional children”—moving back in with mom and dad, who pay them to do chores. At the same time, tens of millions of positions in fields such as manufacturing, information technology and health care will go unfilled this year for lack of qualified candidates. “Low-level manufacturing jobs can be automated, but there’s a severe shortage of skilled blue-collar workers who can write code or operate machine tools,” says Dan Wang, China director of the Eurasia Group.
The disconnect has officials from President Xi Jinping on down urging young people to forgo a college degree and instead attend a vocational school. These offer three-year diplomas and help develop skills for machinery technicians and operators, robotics engineers, nurses and myriad other jobs.