Thinking about studying/working in Mainland China? Think again
Been wanting to talk about this topic for quite some time and share my experiences for anyone whos thinking about studying in China... I did my UG in the EU and being east asian decided to take the plunge and study a masters degree at basically one of the top 5 schools in mainland China... gotta say - this place has sucked the soul out of me albeit I will admit I learnt a lot about life/culture here but will also say that I feel extremely sorry for the locals because damn their life is hard
Uni life really is what you make of it, and I am definitely accountable for my experience, but there are many aspects of this place that irks the hell out of me and I'll share some of it here (note these are my experiences at my uni but from talking with others seems like this is commonplace to the country):
- There is a distinct divide between international and local students. Seems like mainland locals don't really care for interacting with international students (like myself)... tbf, this place is the most introverted place i've been in and sometimes I don't really see locals interacting with locals... everyone just seems to be droning on with their life and keeping to themselves. I could also do better in talking to locals but damn do they seem uninterested and unapproachable
- The general vibe of the people that I speak to really is disillusioned. These are people in a top 5 university in their country and one of them outright told me that when it comes to job hunting their uni doesnt matter as much as their parents connections... nepotism here is (allegedly) like wildfire. People here take a 3 year masters degree simply because they can't get jobs and there was a statistic that a significant proportion of UGs and PGs are food delivery riders. In fact, the minimum criteria for a white collar corporate job here is in fact a post-graduate degree.
- Academics here is a scam. (Personal opinion here) Everyone in my class has been taught to cram, memorize, and regurgitate and not really appreciate nuances or complexities behind certain concepts. I don't blame anyone - it happened to me too. The content is f*cking dense and exams roll by about every 5 weeks (leading to 8 rounds of exam seasons per academic year). I get that this is a master's degree, but I don't think it's fair to learn half of the Wooldridge textbook (econs students would know) in the span of 1.5 months (as just a single class, so students take other classes too). No ones gonna understand sh*t unless they already come from this background (Note: my GPA is fine so I ain't complaining coz I can't handle it, but I think it's idiotic and encourages memorization over actually understanding concepts). IMO this was a natural tragedy of the commons (ie. everyone works so hard until it becomes harder for everyone else)... I think basically everyone was scoring too high on exams up until the point schools have to keep adding content and assignments until taadaa you have what we have now (an overeducated society). NGL this is applicable to all levels of education especially Pre-Uni (高考/ gaokao is f*cking insane).
- On one end, I greatly admire the Chinese people because some have insane work ethic that I simply cannot match... on another end, they're excellent cheaters. how? I've had personal accounts of people getting prior answers to interview questions, exams, recycled past assignments (since most professors just give the same assignment for the same classes y-o-y), you name it. There are paid services or supportive seniors to help give juniors all the edge they need
- Do you want to work in Finance in Mainland China? Great. Do you speak perfect, native mandarin? No- We're not talking about ordering food or hobbies here. We're talking about reading 80-page economic reports or discussing interest rates/ inflation without stuttering and using perfect mandarin without a single word of english. No? Then bye. Like many people, I have the former, not the latter. In hindsight, it was really foolish of me to believe that I had some edge or my international background would give me some cross-border opportunity. Fact of the matter is, plenty of mainlanders speak sufficient (quite bad imo but i digress) english and given current trends, it doesn't seem like there will be any significant demand for anything crossborder. This place is nowhere near as international as anyone would have you think it is. Maybe 2 decades from now things will change? I'm not sure
- Internships here are bullsh*t. Did you ever see that 1 - 2 Chinese kid(s) with like 4-6 internships by the end of their UG and wonder, how tf is that possible? Heres how- the structure of internships (during non-summer time) are of a part-time nature. Work 2/3 days a week for 3 months and boom you have an internship. I'm sorry, but what do you learn from working 24/36 days in 3 months? Some are fully remote, some are more than 2 days a week, some are 2 days at home 2 days in office- really depends firm-to-firm. The thing is, I wonder what kind of work you're doing and whether the work is even useful in achieving any work objective or this is rather just like some status symbol to some boss who could claim he/she has 5 interns under him/her (weird flex I know,). I've heard stories (but can't confirm) where people have worked 2 internships at the same time.
Most of this stems from the culture and history of this place. I argue that it's not the fault of the people and if I grew up under these conditions I would become the things I dislike about this place. I sorta pity the people who live here because this isn't what life should be like, and this place really does feel like its own bubble. The censorship online makes this place hella disconnected from the rest of the world and sometimes it really does feel like a frog in a well situation.
Btw, standard culture/ stereotypes about mainland china can somewhat apply (although the trend is definitely improving). Cutting queues, spitting on the roadside, aggressive yelling or selling tactics. I've seen a mom make her kid pee into a janitor's mop bucket thats used to mop the floor (and I don't think the janitor noticed). I've seen a kid sh*t on a Walmart floor (yes there are Walmarts in China). BTW I live in a tier-1 city (Bj/Sh).
Nonetheless, I've learnt a great deal about the culture and people here. The technology here is amazing (tbh way more advanced than the west). Food is amazing - but its a little bit too much oil for my liking. Infrastructure is crazy good, public transport is amazing, and their trains are hella fast.
I often contemplate whether East will ever overtake West but my general consensus is that it's really hard to say because on one hand these people only know how to work and do nothing else, but to me they lack originality and critical thinking.
Disclaimer: these are my experiences and I'm simply hoping to share to anyone thinking about coming here. Want to do a cultural exchange program? By all means you'll have a great experience. Want to stay here long term? Maybe not unless you're willing to settle for less.
Curious to get a thread going and see other thoughts/opinions.
Very insightful on pros and cons 🙌
The phenomenon you are portraying - only know how to work, nepotism, alleged cheating, not having fun - is what you get in highly competitive societies where the “good job / per capita” ratio is very low. There are 1.4+ billion (?) people in China but only so many high paying/prestigious/stable jobs, which forces families to do everything they can to survive (such as nepotism or outright bribery).
So it’s not like younglings there want to be that way - it’s more that they need* to be that way as a necessity for survival.
You see the same type of phenomenon in places like Japan, South Korea and Singapore, where there have been well documented stories of high school/college kids committing suicide due to immense social pressure.
By the way, a lot of the things you described are not unique to China - they happen in the states as well, just not as extreme. On the “cheating” point for example: I have first hand knowledge that at top prep schools (eg Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, Pingry, etc.), older siblings pass down their exams/notes to their younger siblings, who’d then take the same classes with the same teachers and would know all the test questions ahead of time.
Yeah I definitely agree with you... not sure what the solution is here and I really do attribute this outcome to the circumstances they are in but I guess I got mad culture shock...
I grew up in China before 14 and I can confirm this is a very accurate depiction. I’ll give my 2% to explain why this is happening
China job market is filled with low-end industries and grunt labor. Most of these jobs do not require critical thinking nor creativity, they just want execution monkeys. Therefore higher skills are not treated as priority, connections and family background comes more handy.
There are small amount of high end jobs, mostly in three industries: 1. Investment Banking and Securities, 2. Tech companies like Bytedance and Alibaba, 3. Government official jobs. 1 and 3 have large amount of nepotism because it’s used as a channel for powerful executives to monetize their power and funnel it down to their kids. Bribery is another way, but it isn’t safe because people can get sentenced to death for it. So using connections and power to get kids high-paying jobs become the trendy way for wealth & power inheritance. And these nepo kids crowd out all the merit-based candidates. Ordinary students also know about this but there’s nothing they can do about it. They eventually came up with a desperate survival strategy: pretending to be a nepo kid by piling up 5 internships on resume, because only nepo get so many internhsips when they’re still students. Having recruiters think you are nepo is a GOOD thing in China.
The only high-paying and low-nepo jobs are software engineers at large Internet companies like ByteDance. This is because tech companies are backed by Venture Capital and are not YET state-owned, and hiring strategy is more talent-prone and merit-based. But these companies have very toxic culture. They gaslight employees, force them to work 996, layoff them frequently and randomly, and pay them less money compared to the US-counterpart. And even this door is closing very quickly because many Venture Capitals are either excelled from China or they escaped themselves ( cannot go into specific here ), and tech companies have stopped hiring en-mass and raised their bars to only people with research-publications from top 10 school
The whole thing is so depressing.
Do you have citizenship/ are you asian? Have you ever got any plans to come back?
China has many great things especially the convenience of life. And I’d love to go back if my parents have strong connections to get me a good job. But they don’t and even if they do, the job likely pays one tenth of what I’m making.
"The general vibe of the people that I speak to really is disillusioned. These are people in a top 5 university in their country and one of them outright told me that when it comes to job hunting their uni doesnt matter as much as their parents connections... nepotism here is (allegedly) like wildfire."
Extremely so. Have had Chinese colleagues who did undergrad in the US, but did summer banking/finance gigs in China - who said they got their jobs through nepotism and that there are systems to literally pay money to get the job. Said was a known thing and you could easily get into chinese branch of a bb through that. Or that there are people that will place you into a finance role, but you are told to send your paycheck to them since it's just the resume listing that most are after. Same for big tech.
I think it's a cultural thing. They think there's nothing wrong with it, just different avenues to get to the same destination. And I guess maybe I can partly understand where they are coming from... Still kinda fucked tho
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