About 61 percent of the post-1990s college graduates who responded to a survey in 2013 said they would voluntarily leave first-tier cities for second- or third-tier ones to work, whereas only 46 percent were willing to do so in 2011. The actual situation is different from what the survey suggests, says an article on gmw.cn. Excerpts:

Beijing, for example, had about 229,000 college graduates in 2013. Even if it is true that "six in every 10 graduates chose to leave the city", the capital - after deducting local Beijing students - still had about 20,000 post-1990s non-Beijing graduates living in the city. The survey, in this sense, ignores the fact that graduates rush to metropolises to build their careers.

The survey will force people to think that graduates are leaving first-tier cities because of skyrocketing housing prices and the "unfair" household registration (or hukou) system. But the fact is these problems have already been highlighted by earlier surveys and everyday events.

The majority of the graduates with strong family backgrounds and social networks would have anyway made the rational choice of returning to their hometowns to work. But now, even those who have to fight their way to success could be influenced by the survey and leave the big cities, which offer more and fairer opportunities, and find themselves in greater trouble in smaller cities.

Graduates who want to run away from or squeeze into first-tier cities have their individual reasons for doing so. But "pseudo-surveys" could create a herd mentality among them, which is something uncalled for.