the years passed, I sensed that other young strivers like Michael were growing frustrated as well. Low-skilled jobs weren’t the problem—those wages were climbing—but there weren’t enough white-collar jobs to employ each year’s crop of more than six million new college graduates. Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting salary for migrant workers had grown by nearly 80 percent, but for college graduates, starting wages were flat. When you considered inflation, their income had declined. The young Chinese strivers desperate to become “car-and-home-equipped”—to find a mate and elbow their way
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