A few days ago, I wrote about the “ant people”, a term applied to young people from the 8os generation (who are now in their 20s) who have university degrees but struggle to get by in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Yesterday in class, the topic of suicide came up. One of my students told me that a student at her university committed suicide a few days ago, supposedly because of relationship problems, and other students chimed in with examples from their own schools. I don’t know if the suicide rate among young people in China is unusually high, but there seems to be a perception that it is, and that in today’s society there’s simply too much pressure on young people. A recent case in which a graduate of Wuhan University who was studying for a post-graduate degree in Shanghai committed suicide, reportedly because of financial pressure, has also drawn attention.
My students asked me how Western universities handle these issues. They seemed frustrated that the university provided no information about what had happened, and the students were left to speculate on their QQ group. Depression is a problem in every society, and it’s impossible to generalize about why people choose to end their lives, but it seems like many Chinese universities could do more to help students who are unhappy. Although Harvard has drawn criticism for not doing more to protect students’ mental health, the university has at least put in place basic measures to support students, like free and readily available access to mental health counseling, and efforts to remove the stigma of getting help. Even just acknowledging the problem and accepting that the university bears some level of responsibility for students’ mental health goes a long way.
Although young, well-educated people in China have a world of possibilities in front of them, the pressure they face also seems to be immense. For a university student, there are so many possible paths to take — they can choose to work or study anywhere in China (and often assume that they’ll have to move to a different part of the country to follow the best opportunities, placing them thousands of miles from their friends and families); they can choose to study abroad, in virtually any English-speaking country or any Western European country, meaning they need to compare and navigate dozens of different educational systems in order to make the best choice (or, if they can afford it, pay an agent to help them with the decision); they can continue to study their own major (which was often chosen for them by their parents, or at the very least with a great deal of input from their parents, and is therefore not necessarily something they find interesting), or they can take a risk and switch to something new altogether; they can look for a job, either in a Chinese state-owned company, in a small local company, or in a big multinational company, each with its own very distinct culture and requirements for success.
If they make the right choice, in 8-10 years they’ll be able to buy an apartment, get married, and take care of their parents. If they make the wrong choice, there’s no social welfare system to fall back on. There’s no natural path, and the pressure to make the right choices be enormous.