China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.
These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.
This was never about academic jobs vs non-academic jobs. Yes it’s true there’s only so many academic positions for people with higher education, but those people with higher education should be working in high economic value positions where their level of education is actually of use. For example these people with higher education degrees in science and engineering should be working in an R&D team of an industry leading company, instead of working as a delivery driver, film crowd, or a fricking police axillary which anyone without the education background could perfectly do.
This is not what happening because there is no available positions in any industry leading company’s R&D team because such companies cannot afford expanding their advanced level work force. There is a tremendous lack of social economical resources aka employment opportunities, not only this is a real sign of a struggling economy, but this is also extremely detrimental to the country and its economy as a whole, because a de fecto surplus of people with higher education degree devalues such qualifications, and make it even more difficult for people with such qualifications to find career opportunities where their qualification can be used for creating value, even if such social economical resources does come to existences, this leads to a repeating cycle that keeps getting worse.
I think that if there are indeed fewer industry research opportunities in China than in equivalent Western conditions it is likely due to the very rapid advance of these areas in China and consequent current lack of legacy infrastructure rather than due to a struggling economy. I like very much the idea of police officers with unrelated doctorates, science clubs in factories and plumbers arguing about the Fermi paradox over lunch. I think society would be far better for it and it is impossible to gauge the great value of wide and seemingly off topic experience, individually or in communities.
Technological advancements don’t reduce research opportunities, rather they create more opportunities because the whole industry becomes more developed and more sophisticated, as well as creating new industries. When this doesn’t happen, most of the time it is because of a weak and dysfunctional economy (as well as dysfunctional society due to poorly devised social political policies) cannot always support turning research and development to actual commercial possibilities. This used to be exactly what China is very good at in fact, because China has some of the world’s most vertically integrated production capacity, like for example you can find the factories that make 70% of the different types of components in a smartphone in the same city, significantly reducing production and supplier overhead to an extent you rarely see in other countries until very recently, so it was never the lack of industrial capabilities here.
I agree it would be super cool to see plumbers discussing about Fermi paradox in their break time, but the reality is that is a very American middle class thing, whereas in China the majority of population have extreme social prejudice and bigotry between different social economical classes and education backgrounds, its extreme extent can only be matched by the racial and gender prejudice in the US, and I do not think Chinese people are socially and culturally equipped to handle this increased amount of contact across social economical status and education backgrounds anymore than American people are in average in handling contact across races and gender identities, while having significant less developed and significantly more dysfunctional social institutes.