In recent years, college graduates in China have faced an awkward situation, as decent jobs are not widely available in the cities, where they find it difficult to make ends meet, and there is no future for them in the countryside, where their families live in crippling poverty and under a mountain of education-related debt. In this cartoon, posted by artist Fan Jianping (范建平) to his QQ blog, a college graduate from the countryside, flies off into the sky, still wearing his graduation robe and clutching his degree certificate. His poor parents wave goodbye, but the look on the graduate’s face is one of pain, not of promise.
David Bandurski
CMP Director
