China Tries to Tame Its Supercompetitive Tiger Parents

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Not every child is Harvard material. That’s the message China is sending to its supercompetitive tiger parents after calling a stop to after-school tutoring in July.

China is embracing what might be called the German model. Instead of going into academic institutions, many young Germans enter a “dual training” apprenticeship, splitting their time between classrooms at a vocational school and on-the-job training at a company. This is a great way for them to get good jobs. About 80% of Germany’s large enterprises participate in dual training.

On Oct. 12, the State Council, China’s ultimate governing body, issued a new guideline pushing for something similar. By 2035, the government vowed, the nation will have built a world-class vocational education system to develop highly skilled workers, with at least 10% of the entering class working toward a bachelor’s degree.

China no longer wants so many young university graduates without practical skills—a group that has become a source of unemployment and social discontent. Last year, close to 10 million students enrolled in undergraduate programs, up 46% from a decade earlier. Last June, when the class of 2020 graduated, the unemployment rate for degree holders aged 20 to 24 was 19.3%, vs. the economy’s overall 5%, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.

There are plenty of jobs, especially in the high-end manufacturing sector. But out of personal and family expectations, few fresh graduates want to go work in factories and build electric vehicle parts. Instead, most want to go into consumer tech, media, or financial services.

As a result, the world’s biggest factory is losing its edge. Last year, value added from manufacturing accounted for only 26% of China’s gross domestic product, a 6 percentage point drop from just a decade earlier. By comparison, it took Germany three decades to hit a decline of this scale.

Chinese society can be surprisingly rigid. Schools informally classify children as “golden babies,” “silver babies,” and “copper babies”—usually based on where they’re born and their parents’ wealth. China has enough golden babies, or those who can make it to Tsinghua University and will develop world-class semiconductor chips one day. It has plenty of copper babies, who work in construction and factories making low-end exports such as clothes and toys. But it lacks silver babies, who can manufacture the high-value tech gear that golden babies design.

The question is whether China’s tiger parents will let their babies do vocational training. In big cities, some parents wouldn’t even allow their daughters to marry someone without a bachelor’s degree. And if the daughter has a master’s, good luck to her—she’ll have to marry a Ph.D. So it’s likely that Beijing will have to put incentives in place—such as free tuition at vocational schools, along with pay for on-the-job training—to get its tiger parents to accept the idea.
 
Ren is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
 
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