China's post-95 generation less ambitious in career development

A Chinese company has conducted a survey to compare career hopes of youngsters and previous generations.

But meanwhile, it also finds that many Chinese young people at about the the age of 20 are less ambitious despite their better living conditions.

In its report, the Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd says technology and China's rapidly changing society are reshaping the career hopes of the so-called post 90's generation.

It finds almost 60 percent of the post-1995 generation want to become online celebrities in the face of the country's fast growing online video streaming industry.

This is up from around 40 percent from the previous generation.

It also claims that 15 percent of this generation want to work in the entertainment business, outweighing the internet and information technology.

Ding Yu, a sociologist at Sun Yat-sen University, suggests this way of thinking stems from the desire for a quick way to success.

"Education is perhaps the least effective and most time-consuming way leading to success, especially for people from rural backgrounds. Going into the entertainment business, if they are fortunate enough, they can become famous and become rich overnight."

Tan Jie is the deputy director of Public Relations at Tencent's Qzone, whose team was responsible for the report.

He stresses the role of the internet in the coming of age process for those born after 1995.

"They have been online since they were born, unlike us. We had to learn how to use computers and gradually grasp internet technology since the DOS generation. Whether it is mobile phones or computers, they have lived in an internet environment since birth."

The report was made based on more than 4,000 polls and data generated from user actions.

It shows that apart from their attraction to entertainment, the young generation are more realistic and less ambitious in their career goals, and they focus more on small but concrete happiness, while enjoying life is the most important thing for them.

The report also shows that working for state-owned enterprises has replaced foreign companies as the first choice for millennials, in the meanwhile, a job in the government has fallen out of the top three for the first time.

At the same time, more than one in three among the surveyed want to find a job through their parents' connections, up 15 percent from the previous generation.

More than half of the respondents don't expect their first job to be a high-paying one.

Many expect their first salaries will be no more than 3,000 yuan, or $450.