Facing an uncertain future, thousands of graduating Chinese college students expressed their frustration last month in protests and riots.
The biggest demonstration erupted on June 15. Some 10,000 students in central China's Zhengzhou city ransacked classrooms and administrative offices and clashed with hundreds of police in one of the most intense student protests since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
The riot broke out at the private Shengda Economic, Trade and Management College, which is affiliated with the prestigious Zhengzhou University and has 13,000 students. After paying expensive tuition fees and undertaking years of study, students were angered by the college's decision to award graduates diplomas in its own name, rather than "Zhengzhou University", as promised in its advertisements. The title "Zhengzhou University Shengda Economic, Trade and Management College" will immediately reveal the second-class character of their qualifications to employers.
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"In economic life there is extreme inequality and exploitation. Although colonialism no longer exists openly in the political and economic sphere, still it persists indirectly, and this should not be tolerated... In this respect you should remember that in economic life, we will have to guarantee the minimum requirements of life to one and all... There cannot be any sort of adjustment as far as this point is concerned. The minimum purchasing requirement must be guaranteed to all. Today these fundamental essentialities are not being guaranteed. Rather, people are being guided by deceptive economic ideas like outdated Marxism, which has proven ineffective in practical life and has not been successfully implemented in any corner of the world. Why do people still believe in such a theory, which has never been proved successful? The time has come for people to make a proper assessment of whether they are being misguided or not." |
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"Human beings have still not been able to form a human society, and have still not learned to move with the spirit of a pilgrim. Although many small groups, motivated by self-interest, work together in particular situations, not even a small fraction of their work is done with a broader social motive. By strict definition, shall we have to declare that each small family unit is a society in itself? If going ahead in mutual adjustment only out of narrow self-interest or momentary self-seeking is called society, then in such a society, no provision can be made for the disabled, the diseased or the helpless, because in most cases nobody can benefit from them in any way... in that case there always remains the possibility of some people getting isolated from the collective. All human beings must attach themselves to others by the common bond of love and march forward hand in hand; then only will I proclaim it a society." |