A record 5.6 million students will graduate this year, according to government figures, and jobs are scarce. They will have to compete with the 700,000 graduates from 2007 who remain jobless. Major international companies are now receiving tens of thousands of desperate applications for every available post.

In response, the Chinese government has turned the clock back to embrace Chairman Mao's "Shang Shan Xia Xiang", or "Climb the Mountains and Go down to the Villages" policy from 1968.