Student entrepreneurs a rarity (China Daily) Updated: 2005-04-09 09:32
With Chinese universities turning out as many as 3 million new graduates a
year, the nation is quickly discovering the need to equip its young people not
with just knowledge but the courage to build their own enterprises.
Gone are the days when a university diploma would qualify a person for being
a member of the elite class. Only by adding entrepreneurial knowledge to the
menu of skills for those newly launched into the workplace can today's young
people prove to be society's most highly valued human resources.
Owning and running a company is an incredible way to learn how to use one's
knowledge, manage human relationships, and serve other people.
It is welcome that some government agencies have announced improved terms of
financial support to university students' business ventures.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security announced on March 29 that it
would initiate a training programme designed for 300,000 people across the
country in 2005, including college students, laid-off workers and migrant
labourers, with the expectation that half of the trainees will start their own
businesses. The ministry hopes that such start-ups will become a new source of
jobs to help ease China's lingering unemployment crisis.
On the local level, Shanghai, the largest business city of the nation,
pledged on March 22 that the municipal government would arrange special funds
and grants for university students-turned entrepreneurs. The financial help
altogether could amount to as much as 150 million yuan (US$ 18.1 million) in
three years.
There are also calls from government-related think-tanks for lower taxes and
easier administrative processes for university students' start-ups.
More local governments are reportedly working on similar policies although
there are also people who argued that fresh university graduates usually do not
have needed managerial experience, and that their start-ups tend to fail more
quickly.
But the key, as local officials say in their defence, is not just that the
university graduates' start-ups can help society create jobs, they can benefit
the overall business environment. They represent a different learning experience
for the university graduates themselves, to help toughen themselves into the
nation's future leaders of business development.
No matter how long they last in their business endeavours, so long as they
are serious, having a certain number of them is better than having every
graduate waiting around for the government to hand out job assignments. The
government no longer has the financial resources to do so, as it did in the time
of the planned economy.
One of the early birds who had enough guts to go a different way from the
rest of his class was Wang Yiran. As he graduated last year, while others were
making copies of their resumes, buying new suits for interviews, and spending
sleepless nights waiting for their employment contracts, the 23-year old young
man was busy hiring workers for his partnership company. He is now a specialist
in the paper industry, printing and exhibition services.
Wang, a 2004 graduate from Beijing Foreign Studies University, has always
dreamed of setting up a company of his own since childhood. He did not belong to
the first generation of university graduate-turned entrepreneurs. But he was
certainly one of the most courageous around after the 1999-2000 IT bubble burst.
In fact, as the Chinese media reported, there seemed to be a decline in
enthusiasm to launch business start-ups among the university students. Nowadays,
more often than not, they are advised to take a more rational, if not more
conservative, approaches in building their careers.
According to some recent figures from East China's Jiangsu Province, only 56
out of last year's 240,000 graduates chose to start their own businesses.
That figure is discouraging. And for those concerned with the nation's future
development potential, it is embarrassing. For Jiangsu is one of the provinces
on the Yangtze River Delta, and boasts one of China's largest clusters of
private enterprises. But Jiangsu's university campuses do not seem to reflect
the rising creativity in society.
One of the top provincial leaders, Li Yuanchao, even recently went to Nanjing
University, the best university in Jiangsu, to deliver a speech encouraging
students to become self-reliant in their quest for future success.
Jiangsu is hardly unique. Nor is there a sign of change for 2005. In late
2004, a survey of 2,659 university students from Guangdong, another more
industrialized province in China, showed only 2.6 per cent of them had start-up
plans. While 80.9 per cent reportedly preferred "grabbing a job first, moving to
a better job second, and starting one's own company only in the last."
Many of the surveyed complained about a lack of financial resources. Some
even complained about a lack of government help.
But obviously few of them had thought what a premium they could gain if only
they really managed to put what they thought into reality.
In contrast, Wang, the self-made young entrepreneur, summarized his feeling
of pride like this: "Working for somebody else's company is like a kindergarten
teacher - you are busy looking after other people's kids. But working from a
company of your own, you feel like a real mother, being able to give birth to
and nurture your own child. When I was handing pay checks to my employees, I
could always feel the worthiness in my four-hour-a-day sleep and constant fear
of failure."
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