Employment is the biggest livelihood issue and this can't be truer for new graduates busy with job hunting. The Ministry of Education points out in this year's guideline on college graduates' employment that no discrimination is allowed to appear on hiring ads. However, a survey by the China University Media Union on 605 new graduates from over 100 colleges and universities shows that 75.7 percent of them say they have been unfairly treated in the process of hunting for jobs.

The fight against labor market discrimination is extremely important at this critical moment. A large number of companies recruit graduates only from certain key universities. About 42 percent of the interviewees said they were blocked from company recruitment by the university-class threshold, as they did not graduate from those universities. Some interviewees said they were even discriminated against based on their traditional Chinese zodiac horoscope. To bargain for higher wages with their would-be employers is totally out of the question.

China's Labor Law explicitly stipulates that no discrimination against laborers for the sake of ethnic group, race, gender, religion, etc. is allowed. However, covert job discrimination is omnipresent. In a disadvantageous position, students can hardly argue with potential employers. The lack of effective punishment on such discrimination can only harden the difficulty facing them. At the time of graduation, the best gift to them is a fair job market.

(This is an edited excerpt of an article published in Guangming Daily on June 7)