Figures provided by the Ministry of Education show some 2.12 million college graduates are pouring into the job market this year, an increase of 670,000, or 46.2 percent, over 2002.

Insiders cited this as a trial of China's job market and the carefree, bookish younger generation alike.

"Don't worry. We'll get whatever we want," they tell each other to ease their own anxiety.

Born in the early days of the country's reform and opening to the outside world, the youngsters reared on McDonald's and Mickey Mouse knew their parents' generation indeed got "whatever they wanted" after they finished school -- for decades, college graduates in China were assigned a job that everyone would simply accept with gratitude.

But today, college graduates enjoy more freedom in looking for a job -- and with that freedom comes burdens.

These college graduates are seen scouring recruitment information in newspapers and journals, the Internet and job markets nationwide.

Shortly after hotel management major Hao Wenhua, a girl from Chongqing Municipality in southwest China, failed the recruitment test of a five-star hotel in picturesque Guilin City, southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, reputed for its elegant hills and limpid river waters, appeared at a job market in Nanning City, approximately 300 kilometers from Guilin.

"The competition is quite acute and tough, but I'm fully confident," she said in an interview with Xinhua.

Growing up in the market economy, Hao's generation -- particularly those living in well-off urban families -- have become accustomed to a range of novelties in life. They love to eat hamburgers, and wear foreign-brand jeans and T-shirts and worship Bill Gates.

But they are short of the experience of how to stand out in today's fast-paced society.

"Most firms and enterprises lay equal emphasis on an employee's book learning and inter-personal skills. But many young graduates tend to ignore the latter," said Zhang Li, deputy director of the Guangxi job market based in Nanning.

Invited to a working dinner by a male interviewer at the end of her job interview, a graduate in central Hubei Province hesitated for a while before she asked, cautiously, "Can I bring my boyfriend along?"

She did not get the job.

The unlucky girl was unaware it is routine practice for interviewers at foreign-funded firms to invite an ideal candidate for dinner in order to know more about his or her competence and personality.

Though the overall employment situation for college graduates is not quite optimistic, insiders hold that the crisis is more an outcome of imbalanced talent supply and demand, and high expectations of the students.

"Actually a variety of openings are available in certain areas and certain posts," said Qiu Cheng, a woman deputy director of the Nanning City office in charge of helping college graduates to look for jobs.

According to Qiu, college graduates take up only five percent of China's 1.3 billion populations.

"The figure is lagging far behind what is reported in many developed countries. Our talents supply has by no means exceeded the market demand," she said.

The Chinese government has taken concrete and substantial measures to resolve the bottleneck issue by encouraging college graduates to take up diverse jobs.

Instead of seeking the very limited vacancies at government offices, universities and leading research institutions, the students are encouraged to work in small- and medium-sized enterprises, neighborhood communities and the vast western region.

At a recent talents fair, college graduate Chen Huichang from Guangxi University in Nanning City decided to work at a hydropower station in outlying Longlin County, in the outback of Guangxi, bidding farewell to the city life he knew so well.

"I'll have more career development opportunities there," he explained.

As the starting point of China's grand project of piping electricity to the eastern areas, Longlin County, once the last choice for ambitious young graduates to have a career, has drawn large crowds of applicants this year, said a human resources official.

But not every college graduate is eager to find a job. In a fast-growing economy, young people always have more than one choice: a record 799,000 students sat for this year's national graduate school admission test, and many others are applying to further their education overseas.

No matter what choices they make, the youngsters know very well that they cannot stop where they are.

"I'd love to continue with my doctoral research. As an IT major, you can never learn enough about the state-of-the-art technologies that are being updated nearly every day," said Cao Qisheng, a postgraduate student at Dalian Maritime University in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

(Xinhua News Agency February 19, 2003)