Today’s New York Times has a front page story on a family in China struggling to protect their future. It is a very sad story in that it depicts their extraordinary struggle to provide an education for their only daughter primarily as a means to provide economically for the parents when they are no longer able to work.
Unfortunately, the father’s pay from the coal mine in which he works is low and the cost of education is high. The daughter studies very hard, but is only in the upper middle of her class ranking in the community college she attends, which is not sufficient to ensure success when she graduates. So, we all that hard work and struggle, their prospects are dim:
But high education costs coincide with slower growth of the Chinese economy and surging unemployment among recent college graduates. Whether young people like Ms. Wu find jobs on graduation that allow them to earn a living, much less support their parents, could test China’s ability to maintain rapid economic growth and preserve political and social stability in the years ahead.
Many Americans see China as an economic juggernaut that threatens our economy. The Times effectively takes the issue down to the micro level and shows the other side of Chinese economy.