<div>On a hot summer afternoon in 2006 I was accosted by a young Chinese woman at the base of the Great Wall stretch near the capital Beijing. I remember I was sipping a Coke, as I watched tourists trundle down after a walk on the wall that in many ways defines China’s history, strength and resolve.<br /><br /> <br /><br />“You speak English,” she asked? When I nodded my head, she quickly made me sit on a nearby bench and said haltingly: “Talk…to…me…in English.” We spoke for a while. She asked questions about me; I answered. A bit later she stood up, bowed and said “thank you” before walking away happily.<br /><br /> <br /><br />A few days later, a man caught hold of me on a road in the southern Xiamen city. He too made me sit outside a shop and urged me to speak with him in English. “I am learning the language, but I don’t have anybody to practice with,” he said, introducing himself a schoolteacher. We spoke about this and that for a while. As in Beijing, he stood up after a while and walked away after thanking me for my help. Happy.<br /><br /> <br /><br />The 2008 Beijing Olympics were not far away and the Chinese government had urged its people to learn the universal language quickly. The population was doing what it had been asked to. The effort to learn the language that connects the world has paid dividends in a nation that aspires to beat the West by learning the ways of that world. If business has to be done, it has to be done the way the West does it; it is after all China’s biggest market. And if certain skills are needed to master the shortcomings, those skills are to be acquired at all costs.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Just as the world’s most populous nation set out to teach English to its people ahead of the Olympics, China now wants to produce a record number of college graduates who can go out and work with the rest of the world in ways they need to. The plan is ambitious and expensive, but the Chinese leadership is quite happy to make a $250 billion annual investment in creating human capital. That’s a lot of money, but then there are lots of young people in China who want the opportunity to enter the job market, which needs to be broadened.<br /><br /> <br /><br />China is of course trying to learn from the post-World War II efforts by the United States and Japan to create a new workforce by spending billions of dollars in training large chunks of population, including soldiers returning from war, in new skills.<br /><br /> <br /><br />However, a better-educated population raises different problems, some of which India is currently battling. As incomes rise, so do aspirations. As aspirations rise, so do demands. If, for some reason aspirations are not managed and demands not met, the chances of political and social unrest increases.<br /><br /> <br /><br />India has two problems. Firstly, its colleges are unable to accommodate all the students who want higher education. India’s 33,000 colleges and 700 universities can take in only 4.5 million, or just over 20 per cent, of the 18 million students who need university education every year.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Secondly, its job market is not growing at a pace that is needed to accommodate all the students who graduate from universities. In the five years ending 2008-09, India was able to create only one million jobs! With growth slowing and expected to be in the range of 5-6 per cent every year, the demand-supply gap in education can lead to horrendous politics and economics. There are good reasons to worry when data shows that more than half of India’s 430 million-strong work-force is either illiterate or semi-literate.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Despite a boom in certain sectors, what India has failed to generate through its universities is a bunch of world-class innovators who could create long-lasting global brands and businesses. There are tens of thousands of engineers and management graduates, but the quality is suspect. And this stems from the poor quality of education in schools where, according to a recent report on the state of the education, more than half of fifth grade students are unable to read grade two books.<br /><br /> <br /><br />China could do well to look at what’s happening across the Himalayas as it begins to move faster on the development curve by creating better educational opportunities and more jobs in a slowing economic environment. The latest growth numbers have mitigated fears that the Chinese economy would crash land, but in the long run the Chinese leadership will have to worry about its ability to fulfill the aspirations of an educated population. Inability to meet expectations and provide opportunities – not many Chinese went to college until 1990s -- will create a very different set of pressures for the government in a country where freedom of expression and media are both controlled.<br /><br /> <br /><br />China has a hard task in preparing its white-collar workforce to meet the challenges from the West as its companies expand and spawn large global footprints, taking on some of the biggest firms across the world. Thanks to the government’s one-child policy, China is facing a shrinking workforce. That is not bad news at a time when economic growth itself has fallen lower than the double-digit GDP jumps that world had become accustomed to see.<br /><br /> <br /><br />In the medium term, China wouldn’t mind a slower economy as it pushes its youth into colleges and provides them with the skills to take on the best in the West. But its has to be aware that if there are not enough jobs around, the aspirations of the educated could turn political which will be difficult for the Chinese leadership to accept and manage. China needs to balance it well.<br /><br /> <br /><br />(<em>The columnist is president, public affairs, Genesis Burson-Marsteller and a former newspaper editor. He has a deep interest in matters related to China and Southeast Asia</em>)</div>
