(By Caixin journalists Liu Lingyun, Fan Qiaojia and Wang Xintong)
In April, Gan Ziping returned to China after earning a degree in business administration from Meiji University in Japan. He told Caixin in October that he had yet to find a job even though he had sent out hundreds of copies of his resume.
“I don’t even have an interview now,” Gan said in an earlier interview with Caixin. Many of his peers are also unemployed, he said.
More than 1.2 million Chinese studying overseas are expected to return home this year, according to recruitment site 51job Inc. That figure breaks the previous record of nearly 1.05 million announced by the Ministry of Education for 2021.
But for these overseas graduates, the hunt for a job this year could be tougher than in past years. With a record 11.6 million new domestic college graduates, soaring youth unemployment, and companies scaling back hiring post-pandemic, the odds are stacked against young job hopefuls. This has meant that overseas hires usually have to contend with lower-than-expected salaries.
In the countries where they studied, Chinese graduates are also finding it hard to secure a job. With global economic growth slowing and unemployment rising, some countries have accelerated the pace of stabilising their job markets this year, including tightening visa rules. This has added to the woes of international students who are usually already disadvantaged by their non-local status, language barriers and cultural differences.
... more than half of the employers surveyed have required Chinese job applicants with overseas study backgrounds to have a master’s degree or even a doctorate.
Fierce competition at home
Gao Yang, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Oregon State University and a master’s degree from the University of Warwick’s business school, had set his sights on landing a well-paid job at one of China’s biggest tech firms after graduation.
But despite his credentials, Gao ended up joining a Beijing-based provider of overseas education services as a management trainee instead.
What surprised Gao during his six-month job search was that all his peers who had been through group interviews with him had graduated from China’s top nine universities and received overseas education — even if it was just a one-year master’s study.
Chinese college students are increasingly inclined to continue their education after graduation — some of them doing so to delay entering the sluggish job market. In Beijing alone, there are about 285,000 fresh college graduates this year, with the number of master’s degree holders exceeding that of bachelor’s degree holders for the first time, media reported in March, citing official estimates.
Meanwhile, employers have raised the bar for hiring fresh graduates with overseas degrees as their number continues to rise. According to a 2023 white paper released by tutoring giant New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc., more than half of the employers surveyed have required Chinese job applicants with overseas study backgrounds to have a master’s degree or even a doctorate.
Yet, a mismatch between supply and demand in the domestic job market remains. Labour demand has continued to shrink this year against the backdrop of China’s shaky post-pandemic economic recovery. Zhang Shan, who recently landed a job at an advertising agency in Beijing, told Caixin she has “clearly felt” that companies are posting fewer job openings this fall.
Difficulties entering overseas job markets
Overseas, the employment situation for Chinese students is also getting bleaker. This year, a number of countries have tightened visa rules to ensure local employment. Singapore has introduced a new points-based system for applicants of Employment Pass (EP), the highest tier of work visas for foreign professionals, under which applicants must meet certain criteria in exchange for receiving at least 40 points in an evaluation. The system came into effect 1 September.
The average international student isn’t likely able to meet the EP criteria, thus they have to resort to applying for the S Pass (SP), a lower-tier work visa, Wang Chen, a Chinese student at the National University of Singapore, told Caixin. But Wang said that creates another hurdle — quota restrictions. The city-state has capped the proportion of SP holders in a company’s total workforce at 10% for services and 15% for construction and manufacturing.
Similarly, the UK has raised the salary threshold for skilled worker visa applicants from £25,600 (US$31,784) to £26,200. The increase will make things even tougher, as employers need to fork out more for foreign hires.
To begin with, international students have to find employers willing to sponsor them for work visas. That in itself is a requirement that many British companies do not want to deal with, said Yang Han, a 2023 master’s degree graduate at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Yang explained that such sponsorships are costly and cumbersome, therefore, job seekers who need visa sponsoring are sometimes rejected without any hesitation.
Unless international students have irreplaceable advantages, Yang said, “There are plenty of British locals who can’t find a job, so why do they need you, a foreigner?”
In the US, similarly, some employers have explicitly said they will only hire locals and green card holders, or have withdrawn offers of employment to international students, according to graduates of US universities Caixin spoke to.
It is important to think: “Why are you irreplaceable? What can you bring to the company as an international employee?” — Rohit Sharma, Senior Vice-President, Global Workskills, US Educational Testing Service
Li Min, who has a master’s degree in financial engineering from Columbia University, luckily landed a job with JP Morgan Chase, one of the country’s largest banks. She told Caixin JP Morgan supported her in obtaining a work visa because it “needed me to write code. Locals don’t really want to write code.”
Rohit Sharma, senior vice-president of Global Workskills at the US Educational Testing Service, told Caixin that the difficulty international students face in the job market is short term because developed countries need to replenish their young labour force, including international talent, to cope with an ageing population.
He advised international job seekers to focus on highlighting their strengths with employers. It is important to think: “Why are you irreplaceable? What can you bring to the company as an international employee?”
Reassessing advantages
A growing number of returnees are finding that foreign diplomas are losing their competitive edge in China.
The main reasons for this include the weakening of international students’ foreign language advantage, lack of internship experience and mismatch of majors, according to employers and students Caixin spoke to.
In addition, some employers have prejudices against international students, such as believing that those not from top-ranked schools went abroad because they didn’t study well at home, or that they are “not easy to manage, don’t want to join the ‘rat race’ and have too many ideas,” they said.
“Our company treats domestic and foreign university graduates equally,” said a human resources specialist at a foreign seller of daily necessities. He told Caixin the company values the potential, qualities and skills of job seekers more than their academic background.
An HR officer at one of a Fortune 500 company said she prefers hiring fresh graduates with internship experience both on and off campus. However, international students also have difficulties in obtaining domestic internships. For example, big tech companies want candidates to intern there for at least six months, which is an almost impossible requirement for them, Zhang said.
Furthermore, students with a degree in science or engineering are more highly sought after because tech innovation needs such talent, said Liu Qinqin, a former HR officer at two Fortune 500 companies.
As China’s economic activity picks up, the need to attract overseas talent to expand business abroad has actually grown.
Xu Yan, a sustainable energy graduate from the University of Glasgow agreed, saying science students are usually better at mastering specialised office software such as CAD and Python.
As China’s economic activity picks up, the need to attract overseas talent to expand business abroad has actually grown.
The number of jobs prioritising overseas talent grew 12.37% year-on-year in the first half of 2023, with the highest increases in sectors such as energy, chemicals and environmental protection (92.91%), lifestyle services (44.01%) and machinery and manufacturing (39.42%), according to a report released in August by Liepin, a domestic recruitment firm, and nonprofit Chinese Global Youth Summit.
All names of students mentioned in the article are pseudonyms. Fu Rao, Xu Tongyan and Lin Keying contributed to reporting.
This article was first published by Caixin Global as "In Depth: Why Foreign Degrees Have Lost Their Luster for Chinese Graduates". Caixin Global is one of the most respected sources for macroeconomic, financial and business news and information about China.
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