The golden rice-bowl

摘要

As China's economy has boomed over the past 30 years, the number of young people going into private business has grown accordingly. "Diving into the sea" of commerce, or xia hai as it is known, became accepted as the way to make money and get ahead, and interest in government jobs declined. Over the past decade, though, in an extraordinary reversal, young jobseekers have been applying in droves for government posts, even as the economy has quadrupled in size.