According to People’s Everyday, help is ongoing as 12 million newcomers are quickly rushing to China’s already competitive job market. On April 7, the newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the country’s leadership, ran an article pointing out the over 10,000 AI-related jobs offered at Hangzhou’s spring recruitment centre, where AI charges turbochargers in the job market. The piece is accompanied by graphics from Xinhua Newspaper, showing that a smiling recruiter is handing out jobs to inaugurated students. The message is clear. Graduates can literally enter AI-related positions.
However, according to Qianjiang Evening News, a commercial subway newspaper published in Hangzhou under the state-owned Zhijiang Daily newspaper group, the reality is much more severe for new alumni. “It’s difficult to find a job with a bachelor’s degree in this major,” one of their interviewees is a recent graduate of AI, cited under the pseudonym “Zhang Zixuan.” Alumni said they went to multiple job fairs without securing their jobs. “I don’t know what’s going forward,” they told the paper.
China’s biggest tech companies are actually fishing at the cutting edge of AI and are fighting it to hire “young geniuses” (genius boys) who graduate from the AI program at top universities in China. But while these rare talents (who are they) may be choosing an elite position, the photos are not rosy for the majority. “Despite a booming industry,” Qianjiang’s Evening News concludes that “many of recent graduates of ordinary universities’ artificial intelligence majors are still struggling in the job market.”
Hangzhou is currently being billed by the Chinese media as a major hub for AI innovation and businesses. However, if city media say there are serious issues with AI adoption, other countries may be experiencing similar complications. China’s state media and universities are offering government AI policies as a gift to the country’s entry-level job market. However, these messages are more complicated papers on reality.
Hunting AI Talents
Governments have made it a priority to promote national AI development. In last year’s government work report at two sessions, the main legislative conferences in China, Prime Minister Li Qiang launched the “AI+” initiative (artificial intelligence+ action). The initiative aims to strengthen AI in all industries in the country, taking into account how to unlock the “new productivity” (new production power), the signature phrase of China’s leader Xi Jinping.
The latter needs that. China’s youth unemployment rate was 16.9% as of February this year, coming when the supply of graduates is higher than ever. The 2025 class has nearly 4 million graduates than five years ago.
The tough competition for work is a source of frustration for young Chinese people. Earlier this month, Metropolis Daily in the southern part of Guangzhou reported that state-owned nuclear company CNNC has publicly apologized after being proud to receive a resume of 1.2 million people online to fill the roughly 8,000 positions. The company was accused of “arrance” by netizens.
Coordinating university education to accommodate AI training is seen by leadership as key to leveraging this future technology. In 2017, a State Council document stated that the country lacked the “high-level AI talent” needed to make China a global leader in AI technology. In 2023, the Ministry of Education issued a reform plan, which required 20% of university courses to be adjusted by this year, gradually abolishing new technologies and courses that are not suitable for social and economic development.
Universities across the country are responding with dramatic overhauls of their curriculum. Ta Kung Pao, the party’s mouthpiece in Hong Kong, reports that nearby universities in Guangdong have already established 27 AI universities. Meanwhile, universities like Hudang University in Shanghai have announced that they will cut humanities course locations by 20% as ordered, and instead focus on AI training. In the case of Jin Lee (Kimyu), the University President of Hudhan, university courses must explicitly serve China’s nationally oriented technological development goals. “How many liberal arts undergraduates do we need in today’s age?” he asked rhetorically.
Technical issues
State media says AI+ is already revitalizing the job market. A reporter at one job fair in Beijing this month, and for the State Council media outlet China Times, pointed out that the “Surge in Demand” of the state company (SOE) because of its talent, he said he saw “many work units that meet my job expectations” in AI. The Shanghai and Guangdong Job Fair is a reporter for Shanghai Securities News (Shanghai Co., Ltd.), a subsidiary of the provincial news agency Xinhua, and observed a long line in front of the booth for algorithmic engineering and data labeling work. Based on that, he wrote that “AI Fever” held the gathering.
AI itself spreads a positive message about the work it brings. Ahead of two sessions this year, People’s Daily Online has pitched Deepseek to help citizens understand the “happiness code” embedded in the two sessions. This is done by explaining state-imposed solutions to current social issues to facilitate the concerns of netizens.
One question the outlet asked was about what AI jobs are available to recent graduates. When asked Deepseek the same question on a Chinese media project, he told AI that it would “provide a wealth of employment opportunities for recent graduates,” citing some well-encrusted ones. One of these is “data labeling” (number of note), and Deepseek said these positions are up 50% year-on-year. The source of the request was an article in the Workers’ Daily Papers (Cartoon Daily Report), a newspaper under the CCP-led All-China Labour Union (ACFTU).
Needless to say, the role of the ACFTU newspaper is to promote the economic agenda of leadership, rather than accurately reporting on the country’s workforce challenges posed by technological change. This role, again, means that hype takes precedence over facts. In this case, the worker’s daily cites the case of a deep Shenzhen data-solving university, suggesting that university graduates receive an average of 10 job openings within an hour of uploading their resumes online.
Even though such data annotation roles are currently available, this does not point to the path to a rosy future to make young data annotators more broadly motivated. In fact, some data annotation roles require little qualifications. Additionally, after just three weeks of training, a fresh trainee from a high-tech company may be trusted to do this task. These relatively unskilled jobs can be created by AI, but they are also vulnerable to replacing them with AI itself. China’s state broadcaster CCTV reports that 60% of data annotations are currently being done by AI, doubling in just three years.
The CCTV report points to a trend that appears to be few national media openly acknowledged in hype than AI jobs. This is the shift in this sector to more specialized employees already. That means raising the bar for data annotator qualifications, and ultimately fewer people will need to do this task. The report cites Qianjiang’s evening news as an anonymous application engineer saying the number of data labels for his company has already declined. “Big models can label themselves,” he told the newspaper.
The same report suggests that demand for AI skills varies widely across businesses. Zhang, a recent alumni of pseudonyms, said most of the university’s employment fair companies that participated in do not offer AI-related jobs. Those who were doing such work generally called for a higher education as a master’s level. The lessons drawn from Zhang’s experience are that the training provided by these new AI education centres, not to mention future demand. While companies often require detailed expertise in areas of expertise that fine-tune AI models, AI courses often sacrifice depth by giving students a short period of training in a variety of AI skills.
Another concern comes to mind: Who will teach the next generation of AI experts? The sudden expansion of universities to meet the needs of AI+ initiatives is undoubtedly creating a lack of unique talent. In a speech earlier this month, senior scientists at Peking University alleged that many AI centers have hired inexperienced professors to fill their education positions. He added that certain AI centers move members of mathematics and art universities to act as “part-time” deans of these centers.
Vocational schools can be even more difficult. These universities are usually condemned in Chinese society and are stereotyped as attended by students who failed university entrance exams. This puts them at the bottom of the mountain for ambitious AI talent. For example, one vocational college on Hubei said it has created an AI major in response to the Ministry of Education’s promotion to develop high-quality AI talent. However, previous experience in this complex field is not only “preferred” than necessary, but also promotes AI teaching positions.
It’s no surprise that the overly optimistic story of the employment fair national media stuffed with jams handing out AI positions. Cutting is tough. While a handful of elite graduates at the pinnacle of China’s AI sector may enjoy rich opportunities, it is misleading to suggest that their exceptional success stories are evidence that AI has committed to employment for the wider public. A bigger context is important: As Xi Jinping’s government promotes AI as the basis for China’s economic future, an expanded gap has been formed between top-down ambitions and ground reality for millions of alumni. Instead of excitedly focusing on the long queue at the AI stalls at the job fair, Chinese media should ask deeper questions about the issues that create them.
