When the city of Baiyin, Gansu province, looked for ways in 2014 to help its graduates find jobs, it managed to get the employment rate as 85 percent, for the 9,055 new grads and 6,300 previous grads who still had no job, making 2014 "the most difficult year to find a job for graduates, with unemployed people far outstripping the available jobs," according to the city’s Human Resource and Social Security Bureau,

To deal with the problem, the city government, social security bureau and the education bureau came up with policies to help and began working with companies to, for example, hire some to become village officials or encourage them to work in rural areas or start their own business, and by providing training and internships to help them.

By now, more than 7,400 grads have been put to work, with about 1,200 of them working in rural areas and with social service agencies, and more than 2,400 hired by non-State-owned enterprises.

By Li Xiaoxu and edited by Roger Bradshaw