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Alice Yan

When her mother told her that she was getting less than half the monthly allowance she had asked for, the Chinese university student wasn’t happy.
The unnamed student in a “new first-tier city” had asked for 4,500 yuan (US$632) a month only to be told by her mother that 2,000 yuan was all that she was getting.
So she took to social media to complain, saying her allowance would not be enough to live on.
“When I was at high school, my mother was very generous and didn’t hesitate at all to pay 4,000 or 6,000 yuan a month for my supplementary classes on academic subjects,” she wrote. “But, now that I’ve been admitted to university, she just gives me 2,000 yuan.
“Isn’t this the reality – that girls need more money, to buy skincare products and new clothes, than boys?
“I think other girls in my dormitory are rich because they use luxury items. I don’t understand why my mum doesn’t give me [the money I ask for].”
The complaint quickly became a discussion topic on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, attracting millions of views and tens of thousands of comments – most of them negative.




But just how much is enough?
Academics, students and parents said that allowances for university were not straightforward and depended on factors such as parental income, campus location, the lifestyle of the student – and how much parents were prepared to give their child.
Gu Jun, a sociology professor at Shanghai University, said the spending habits of students varied widely but a common factor was their dependence.
“What we should pay attention to is that university students in China are generally not independent,” he said. “They take asking parents for living allowances for granted, otherwise they get angry.”
Gu said parents might decide that their children would learn helpful life lessons by spending their college or university years on a tight budget.

Jiang Chenbing, a third-year student at a financial university in Changchun, northeastern Jilin province, said the roughly 2,000 yuan he spent a month was at the mid-range of expenditure in his class.
Most of the time, Jiang ate at the school canteen, where meals cost around 10 yuan each. The bulk of his spending went on books, clothes, shoes and an occasional dinner at a restaurant with friends.
Stella Xia from Shanghai, whose daughter starts university in Beijing this month, said she planned to take a flexible approach to her daughter’s allowance. She thinks a 4,500 yuan a month is too much, and said that a lot of parents did not earn that much.
“I plan to give my daughter 2,500 yuan each month,” she said. If her daughter asked for more, Xia said she would want to know why.
“If she plans to buy luxury bags or clothes, I will say no. But if she wants to buy cameras or visit art exhibitions, I will agree,” she said.
University graduates face tough competition and low salaries
At the Communication University of China in Beijing, Cao Sanxing, deputy dean of the internet information research institute, said the WeChat student’s living costs became a big issue because the allowance she asked for was far higher than what most people could expect to live on.
“It came at the start of the school year and it is also a livelihood issue because a lot of families have to support their children to study at university,” Cao said.
It also struck a chord with the increasing number of Chinese families who send their children to universities and colleges. Education news website Eol.cn reported that first-year enrolments in China rose from six million in 2008 to 7.9 million 10 years later, and hit 8.2 million this year.
Chinese university students generally live in dormitories that charge 1,000-2000 yuan a year. Often even students who study at universities or colleges in their hometown live on campus during the week and only return home at weekends and holidays.

Wei Wuhui, an assistant professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s media school, said the student’s allowance demand grabbed the public’s attention for a very simple reason – people wondered “why the kids of today need so much money”.
“I remember decades ago, university students needed little money to survive on campus,” he said. “On top of low inflation, another important reason was that most universities were located outside downtown areas and there were few shops nearby, so students had nowhere to spend money.”
Times have changed, and an internet-savvy student population was a big source of consumer spending thanks to booming e-commerce, he said.
Will my child be safe at university?
That was one reason why many students ended up taking money at exorbitant interests rates from online lenders, Wei said. Some had committed suicide when they found they were unable to pay their debts.
Cao said students needed guidance “away from pursuing vanity and living a luxury life”.
Ma Jianbin, deputy director of the Ministry of Education’s students’ aid management centre, told People’s Daily last September that none of the students caught up in the spate of “campus loan” tragedies borrowed money to pay for tuition – they had borrowed to pay for consumption.


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University student’s complaint stirs up social media storm about youthful spending habits



University student’s complaint stirs up social media storm about youthful spending habits.
