China's young people are smashing the traditional "iron rice bowl", or job for life, by job-hopping in the hope of better prospects.

A survey by the Shanghai Municipal government indicated that 23.8 percent of young people in the top industrial and commercial center in China had changed jobs at least once.

The survey also showed that as many as 56.3 percent of the young people in the city hoped to find better jobs.

This is also the case in Beijing and Shenzhen, an economically prosperous city in south China's Guangdong Province, as a similar survey showed that about 45 percent of workers had job-hopping experience.

Hai Feng, who graduated from Peking University four years ago, says he is the only one of his 26 classmates who has remained in the same job since graduating.

"Every few weeks, my classmates will inform me of their new work addresses and phone numbers," he says.

Hai's father, who has spent his entire career in a factory in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, says the elder generation in China never dreamed of choosing their jobs freely.

On graduation from college or university, they took up whatever job the government assigned them until they retired.

In the past, people favored permanent jobs with lifelong security. Without the job, they had little chance to find a new one, since every person was assigned an occupation.

Attitudes to employment have changed with the country's opening-up and market-oriented reforms since the late 1970s, says Shi Ying, a Xi'an-based sociologist.

Under the planned economy, the employer had to take care of everything for his or her staff, including housing and medical care, and if the employee quit, he or she would lose everything.

With the deepening of reforms, the labor market is also experiencing drastic changes. Medical care and housing are no longer free to employees, who have to buy their apartments.

Meanwhile, restrictions on labor movement have been eased, enabling talented and energetic people to move about more freely, especially to growth businesses in the coastal areas.

On the other hand, without government job assignments, employers can freely recruit or lay off employees in line with a company's needs.

A survey conducted by China Youth Daily in June this year showed that 63 percent of young people change their jobs because they think they will have more chance to develop.

"If I find that my present job lacks prospects, I will leave without hesitation," said a young man questioned in the survey. The survey also showed that young people paid more attention to whether the job allows them to display their talents than the pay.

(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2003)