At first glance, Guo Yilei looks like a Chinese success story. Born to a poor peasant family in China’s remote Gansu province, he is now a 26-year-old computer programmer in Beijing. He makes decent money by Chinese standards, more than $70 a week -- when he has work, that is. 

    It can take months to find the next job. Meanwhile, he is living in Tangjialing, a reeking slum on the city’s edge where he and his girlfriend rent a 10-square-meter studio apartment for $90 a month. “When I was at school, I believed in the saying, ‘Knowledge can help you turn over a new leaf,’ ” said Mr. Guo. “But since I’ve started working, I only half-believe it.”

    Mr. Guo and an estimated million others like him represent an unprecedented and troublesome development in China -- a fast-growing white-collar underclass. Since the ’90s, Chinese universities have doubled their admissions, far outpacing the job market for college grads. This year China’s universities and tech institutes churned out roughly 6.3 million graduates.

    Many grew up in impoverished rural towns and villages and attended second or third tier schools in the provinces, trusting that studying hard would bring them better lives than that of their parents. When they move on and apply for jobs in Beijing or Shanghai or any of China’s other booming metropolises, they get a nasty shock.

    They may be smart and energetic, but some are starting to ask if the promise of a better life was a lie. They are known as “ants” for their willingness to work, their dirt-poor living conditions and the seeming futility of their efforts. “These ants have high ambitions but virtually no practical skills,” said Zhou Xiaozheng, a leading sociologist at the People’s University of China. It is a potentially explosive situation. Unrest is sweeping the manufacturing sector, where strikers at several factories have demanded not only better pay but also the right to elect their own representatives for collective-bargaining efforts.

    The discontent rising among the ants is even more worrying. Blue-collar wages have soared recently while white-collar pay is shrinking, thanks to a massive glut of university graduates. Salary cuts are not their only complaint. Official Chinese labor statistics claim that 87 percent of college grads find work of some sort sooner or later.

    Those who get jobs do not always find work in their chosen fields. Nearly a third of Beijing’s ants are employed in “sales in private business.” For tech engineers, that often means peddling low-end electronic gear for the city’s computer wholesalers. 

    Source: News Week

 中国“贫穷”白领快速增多

       初看之下，郭易雷(音)可以说是通过奋斗获得成功的中国人的典型。他出生在甘肃省一个农民家庭，而现在26岁的郭已经是北京的一名电脑程序员了。按中国的标准，他拿着相当不错的薪水，每周70美元以上，当然这是说在他有工作的时候。

       要再找下一份工作可能需要几个月。他眼下住在唐家岭——城郊一个地处偏僻的贫民窟，他和女朋友在那里每月花90美元租了一间10平米的小房子。“我在学校的时候一直相信知识改变命运的说法，”郭说，“但自从我开始工作以后，我就对这点将信将疑了。”

       和郭一样的一大批人代表了中国一个前所未有而又棘手的现象：快速增长的白领下层阶级。从上世纪90年代以来，中国大学的招生人数翻了一倍，远远超过了大学毕业生就业市场的发展速度。今年中国的大学和技术院校的毕业生大约有630万人，其中许多人出身贫困偏远的城镇乡村，并且上的是地方的二三流学校，他们相信努力学习就能过上比父辈更好的生活。但是等他们跑到北京、上海等繁华的大都市找工作的时候，就仿佛挨了当头一棒。

       他们可能聪明、富有活力，但有些人已经开始怀疑更好的生活前景是不是一个谎言。他们被称作“蚁族”，因为他们乐于勤奋工作，但生活条件却很差，而且努力往往收效甚微。“这些蚁族有着雄心壮志，但缺乏实用的技能，”中国人民大学一位社会学家说。这一状况有着很大的潜在危险。整个制造业已经出现了动荡不安的局面，工厂的工人不仅要求提高工资，还要求选出集体谈判的代表。

       “蚁族”中膨胀的不满情绪更加令人不安。蓝领工人的工资实际上正在增长，而白领的收入却在减少，这主要是由于大学毕业生的人数太多。收入的减少还不是他们抱怨的惟一原因。中国官方的数据说，大学毕业生的就业率是87%。

       而那些找到工作的也往往是专业不对口。北京的蚁族有近三分之一都在从事“私营业的销售工作”。对于工程技术专业的人来说，那就意味着为电脑批发商叫卖低端的电子设备。