Experts say the intensive education system focuses on practical skills and holds students back by surprise critical thinking.
According to Chinese watchers and educators, China’s youth unemployment crisis is driven not only by the country’s economic disaster, but also by the failure of the ideological education system of the communist regime.
They say graduates from Chinese universities and universities lack the essential skills necessary to promote economic growth, as the regime’s education system, including forced crimes against ethnic minorities, blocks free thinking and prevents students from engaging in vocational research.
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Mark Thomas, an assistant professor at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, told the Epoch Times in a recent email that China’s education system “is not adapting to the demands of both the Chinese and global economy.”
Skill mismatch
According to some Chinese observers, there is a discrepancy between the available job hunting and job seekers’ preferences.
“The Chinese real estate and tech markets, which many university graduates have been looking for jobs, are still on post-pandemic slides,” said Thomas.
“Chinese students also tend to be directed towards working in government sectors and urban areas, both of whom are tired of the excessive supply of people seeking jobs and housing.
“Add the preferences of older workers and the fact that established workers are reluctant to quit their jobs. It makes the job very difficult.”
In December 2024, over 3.4 million applicants passed pre-screening for the Chinese civil service exam for approximately 39,700 public sector employment. Approximately 2.6 million of these applicants took the exam. In other words, 65 people competed for one job.
Li Yuanhua, a former associate professor at Beijing’s capital, Normal University, said the choice reflects the widespread mammonist culture in Chinese society under the communist regime.
Students are encouraged to pursue a career in the state bureaucracy and corporate. This is because it can provide higher economic benefits and avoid careers that require technical skills.
When Chinese universities resumed admission to qualified students after the Cultural Revolution, higher education was rare, with only 2.7% of the university population recognized by universities in 1978. According to official figures, China’s third-level total registration rate in 2023 reached 60.2%.
However, Li said the university saw admission as “a way to make money, not an opportunity to develop talent.” Therefore, over-expansion of enrollment allows unqualified students to be hospitalized in a low-quality education system, and universities are not spending sufficient resources on the educational skills needed in the industry, he said.
Frank Shee, a Chinese economy expert and professor at the University of South Carolina Aiken University, said China’s third-level education was expanded by “heavy debt and a shortage of qualified teachers,” resulting in a “overflow of undered educated students” in China.
Lack of critical thinking
Emphasis on theoretical knowledge in the Chinese education system means that many students may lack experience in problem solving. “This is an important workplace skill,” Rebecca Crosie, dean of the Faculty of Global Studies and Contemporary Linguistics at Drexel University in Philadelphia, told the Epoch Times.
Clothey lived in China for about six years between the early 1990s and 2010. During that time she taught English, learned Chinese and served as a visiting scholar in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region of northwest China.
Comparing the US and China education systems, she says, “American students may not be as strong in material based on actuality, but are stronger in critical thinking, analysis and creativity. Meanwhile, Chinese students may know more facts, but do not necessarily have the analytical, critical thinking or creativity embedded in the curriculum in the way American schools assume.”
The lack of critical thinking skills means that Chinese graduates are “very informed and perhaps even skilled,” Thomas said, with the lack of innovative and entrepreneurial critical thinking skills, and the traits needed to promote economic growth, which creates employment.”
Part of the reason, according to Clothey, may be the difference between the two languages.
“The only way to learn to read” Chinese is to “memorize.”
“And it’s built into something like an academic approach: memorization, learning facts, what the book tells you, what the teacher says to you, and then you can repeat it without necessarily thinking about what the book says,” she said.
“In English, you have to learn to read. It’s not a memory process because you’re a phoneticist. So I think that the habits (some) developed from a young age are reflected in the entire education system.”
Clothey said that while the new generation of American students also lose their analytical skills, Chinese students have another disadvantage: censoring the speeches of the communist regime and control over education.
“China has state-run media. All of the news is run by the government, so there is no alternative voice other than China’s social media. This is being monitored by the government as well,” she said.
“So you really can’t get an outside voice and it makes it difficult to integrate it as an individual, as you don’t have many different opinions that you can read or think about. You have one opinion.
She said the Chinese education system is “a lot more centralized” than the US education system. This means that the curriculum is not culturally related in different fields and students who do not think the curriculum is relevant are less likely to succeed.
Party-national education
Thomas said that China’s education system “is so dependent on the state to fund and subordinate the demands of the Communist Party of China’s septal leaders that it has no freedom to think and criticize both inside and outside the classroom.”
“The lack of true academic freedom humiliates both educators and students,” he said.
Li said Chinese university students should spend time on political courses such as Marxism, history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the ideology of communism and socialism of former CCP leaders.
He described China’s education system as “party state education, brainwashing education” and education subordinate to the communist regime.
“Therefore, this system has always emphasized standard answers. Especially in the humanities and social sciences, students are not allowed to have independent thinking and opinions, and not to speak about some basic facts,” he said.
“(Students) should adopt what is called standard answers, or brainwashing content.”
Forced sinicization
Clothey, who worked at New Jiang, said that it would be beneficial for China if the administration assessed minority languages such as Uyghur and Tibet.
“For a while, when private English schools were being encouraged in Ulmki, many Uyghurs opened up the English schools in Ulmki, where English was taught in Uyghur, which was something they knew.
“The school then created curriculum materials that were also found in Uyghur translations of English textbooks, instead of translations of Chinese textbooks.
The school “created opportunities” for Uyghurs to learn and work until the CCP changed policies regarding private education, she said.
“It’s certainly true that private schools run by Uyghur are no longer available,” she said, adding that many well-known Chinese English schools have also been closed.
In the 1990s, the CCP began piloting bilingual education at New Jiang, where children were taught both Uighur and Mandarin, and in 2004 they began more active bilingual education.
Survivors of the camp say they have experienced forced labor, forced sterilization, political indoctrination and other abuses during detention.
The US government calls the suppression of the Chinese regime of New Jiang genocide.
In 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Office discovered that Uyghur’s austerity against Muslims could become a crime against humanity.
Beijing has repeatedly denied allegations of human rights abuses by Xinjiang.
According to UN experts on human rights at New Jiang, Uyghur children whose parents had detained or transferred to other parts of China were treated as orphans and educated at an institution where only mandarins could speak.
