Competition for jobs in China has grown so fierce that university students are paying brokers the equivalent of millions of won to land internships at well-known companies. As expectations build that internship experience improves the odds of landing a full-time job, the financial burden now begins well before students start applying for work.
Wang Guilin, an accounting undergraduate, faced two options while looking for a winter internship, the South China Morning Post reported on the 25th: compete with thousands of applicants through the regular recruitment process, or pay several thousand yuan for a guaranteed slot.
Wang, whose academic record is average, wants hands-on experience at a well-known company to improve the chances of finding work after graduation. But with internships themselves becoming hard to come by, Wang has begun weighing whether to pay a broker for a way in.
"These positions usually go to third- and fourth-year students at top universities, or to students with outstanding internship records," Wang said. "Someone in my situation would consider paying a referrer to secure a spot."
Broker fees run as high as 5.97 million won, above graduate starting pay
The services on offer range from job coaching, including resume editing and interview preparation, to packages that promise a guaranteed internship. The problem is the price.
The winter internship at a major accounting firm offered to Wang cost 6,000 to 12,000 yuan, or roughly 1.19 million to 2.39 million won. Wang said even that was cheaper than a longer summer internship.
Online accounts from students describe paying up to 30,000 yuan, about 5.97 million won, in brokerage fees for an internship. That far exceeds what a new graduate typically earns in a month. MyCOS, a Chinese education research and consulting firm, estimated the average monthly income of 2025 graduates six months after leaving school at 6,435 yuan, or about 1.28 million won.
Students take on those costs because they expect internship experience to help them land white-collar jobs. Pressure to build a work history before even applying for entry-level positions is translating into the cost of buying internships.
China's youth unemployment rate stood at 18% in September. A record 12.7 million students graduated from universities during the summer graduation season. With entry-level jobs scarce, some graduates have turned to food delivery or freelance work, and others have looked into factory production jobs.
Forged certificates and recommendation letters as firms exploit job anxiety
Amid the hiring squeeze, students have also been defrauded by schemes using internships as bait. In July, the state-run People's Daily reported that a company in Guangzhou impersonated employees of well-known domestic and foreign firms and assigned students work remotely. Once the students completed the assignments, the company issued internship completion certificates and recommendation letters bearing forged electronic seals.
There have also been reports of employees at major companies signing illegal remote work agreements with interns without registering them in the company's human resources system. That is why concerns have emerged that students who pay money and perform actual work may still not have the experience recognized as a formal internship.
Stuart Gietel-Basten, a professor of social science and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said job anxiety is mounting as worries about artificial intelligence, a broad slowdown in economic growth and a rising number of college-educated young people entering the labor market compound one another. "It is only natural that anxiety is very high," the professor said. "The most unscrupulous organizations will exploit that anxiety."
Wang, worried about how remote internships are regarded, says only on-site positions would be considered even if payment were involved. For now, Wang plans to keep applying directly, build experience at smaller companies and try for an internship at a large firm in the third year of study. Still, Wang said paid internships could come back into consideration if the job market has not changed by next year.
Gietel-Basten warned that "competition over internships and additional qualifications could deepen inequality in education and the labor market." Access to jobs, in other words, may hinge not only on ability but on whether a student can afford the cost of acquiring experience.
"The biggest concern is that jobs will not go to the most talented young people, but to those who can afford to take unpaid internships or to look for work with support from private companies," the professor said.