The Living Conditions of Ant Clans and the Enterprises' Social Responsibilities in the Process of China's Economic Modernization

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Current Situations of Ant Clans

The ant clans, the gathering group of college graduates with low income, have reached a large scale of hundreds of millions of people. Born in poor and small countryside and towns, most of ant clans choose to work in large and modern cities (metropolis) such as Beijing and Shanghai, which seems deadly attractive to them for they offer better space for living and self development.

Though nearly all ant clans have received higher education, over half of them graduate from common universities. However, compared with the data in 2009, the percentage of the students of 211 key universities has witnessed an obvious increase from 10% to 28.9% in 2010, which takes up 3/10 among all ant clans. Furthermore, the composition of postgraduates went through a continuous upward tendency from 1.6% in 2009 to 7.2% in 2010. See from the following chart.

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Chart 2-1The percentage of the students of 211 key universities among ant clans

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Chart 2-2 The percentage of postgraduates among ant clans

With the average age focusing on 22 to 29 years old, it refers to groups of “post 80” or even “post 90”. Highly educated, they are primarily engaged in all sort of temporary work, such as insurance industries, estate agents, electronic equipment sales, advertising sales and catering services. According to a survey in CHINA TALENTS DEVELOPMENT REPORT NO.2, the average monthly income of ant clans is only 1956yuan, which is much lower than the average income of office staff (white collars) in cities and graduates with half a year working experience after graduation. Moreover most ant clans aren’t able to guarantee their reasonable legal rights without contracts signed with the companies, like the medical insurance, pension and insurance against suspension of work. Owing to the low income and the rising cost of living like goods and rent of apartment, the majority of ant clans choose to inhabit the urban--rural areas or countryside near the city and live in the same district, such as Tang jia ling in Beijing. It has a capacity of more than 50000 dwellers, of which the living quality is seriously low and the conditions and environment are supposed to be noisy, dirty and horrible.

Because the rental fee of the gathering district is much lower than other areas—about 377 yuan for each one a month and average of the living area square for each one is within 10 square meters which can merely fulfill one’s fundamental requirement.

Concerned with love and marriage, the problem has become more and more severe. A survey after polling thousands of ant clans found that the singles have a predominance accounting for 86.9%. At the age most suitable for marriage, only 23% of ant clans have lived with their lovers now for they can’t pay high cost of love and getting married.

So how does this problem come into being? We can analyze the reasons from the following two perspectives.

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Reasons Causing This Phenomenon

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From the microscopic point of view

In the first place, the low housing rent and the relatively convenient transportation are the objective reasons for the generation (formation) of the ant clan. As the management of measures of the central city and suburban areas gradually flourish, the flowing population must immigrate to the surrounding areas on account of the easily available transportation and low cost of living and large amounts of land resources.

Secondly, on one hand, being a freshman, the young people have just stepped into the society and would prefer living with the coeval they are familiar with in order to pursue a kind of sense of safety. On the other hand, a lot of members of ant clans have formed their own circles in which there are classmates, alumni and fellow-townsman.

Furthermore, it often happens to college students that, when choosing jobs, they always hold backward ideas. They don’t care much about what they like or want. They just simply follow others’ footsteps, regarding the standard and values of society as their own life style and credo. Especially the students from the poor areas prefer staying at big cities even with low living quality instead of going back to their hometown or other less-developed places.

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From the macroscopic point of view

The huge difference between the higher education system and the social needs, plus the significant rise of university enrollment that level the university entrance rate up at 21% only in 7 or 8 years make the supply of college graduates greatly excess the demand of society, resulting in an abundant surplus. With the popularization and socialization a great number of students receiving the same education are faced with an embarrassing situation as they don’t have practical and marketable skills in their work and reality.

Apart from the education system, the excessive concentration of resources in metropolis caused by the unbalanced development of regional economy is responsible for the problem. As a famous sociologist Lewis Mumford says: “The city is just like a big magnet, attracting millions of talented people and resources.” The economy and society of large cities (metropolis) grows, making it more and more glamorous and attractive. Offering higher salaries and bigger space of promotion, it seems more appealing to the youth hungering for realizing their values.

Taking Beijing as an example, its economic vitality and living standards have reached a considerable level. After holding the 29th Beijing Olympic Games, the students graduating in Beijing and other cities widely think that they will get more opportunities and remuneration in Beijing.

The economic structure and companies are also responsible for the problem to a large extent. China is lack of labor intensive industry with international competitive strength--high-end service industry and high technology industry. One aspect is that our country is still at the low-end of the industry chain and has limited capacity to employ university students. The other one is that new policy of employment has some practical and operational defects, short of a complete set of document management, personnel agency, social security,