On the Development Status of Rural College Students Returning Home to Start Businesses from the Perspective of Social Network —A Case Study of Town D, City H, Province S

The rural revitalization strategy was initiated in the Report of the 19th CPC National Congress, accompanied by a series of policies, encouraging college students to return to home to start a business. The highly educated college students are the main force for the rural revitalization, but there are many problems ahead of them while launching business in hometown. In the light of the current status, this paper, combining the actual conditions of college students returning home business, analyzes obstacles for these students with the social network theory, and puts forward suggestions to envisage the importance of the social network for college students entrepreneurship in hometown, and to change the traditional concept of rural students’ parents etc., in order to reduce the resistance of college students returning home business, improve the their enthusiasm and business benefits. Keywords—rural areas; college students; returning home to start a business; social network I. RESEARCH BACKGROUND In the report of the 19th CPC national congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has put forward the strategy of rural vitalization, which provides strategic guidance for China’s rural development in the new era. The vigorous development of the rural economy has created a good entrepreneurial environment, activated the rural innovation, and provided more opportunities for rural college students to return home to start their own businesses. Local governments have issued various policies to encourage college students to return home to start businesses, which has created a good social environment for them. Recent years have witnessed the great importance attached by China to rural e-commerce. The central “No.1 document” of six consecutive years has clarified to develop ecommerce in rural areas. At present, college students start their own businesses through e-commerce to inject vitality into rural development, which is of great significance for solving the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers as well as promoting the rural revitalization. II. LITERATURE REVIEW The academic community has made a research on college students’ returning home to start a business and gained some achievements. As for the returning motivation, some scholars believe that the current new countryside construction meets the development of times and offers great opportunities for college students’ entrepreneurship and employment. [1] What’s more, under the “internet +” background, the promotion of ecommerce has generated opportunities and room for students who return home to start a business. [2] At the same time, family spirit support, favorable hometown loan and tax preference are also the main factors affecting young college students to return home to start their own businesses.[3] As for the problems faced by college students who return to their hometowns to start businesses, some scholars believe that college students who are the second generation of farmers face challenges in terms of policy support, capital raising, entrepreneurial environment and individual entrepreneurial quality. [4] Taking Hunan province as an example, some scholars have found that returning young people have many favorable factors for Internet entrepreneurship, but there are also problems such as imperfect policies and regulations, insufficient implementation and low overall level of ecommerce. However, lack of venture capital, start-up technology and backward start-up ideas are the main challenges for college students to return home to start their own businesses. [5] Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 322 2nd International Seminar on Education Research and Social Science (ISERSS 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 448 To resolve these obstacles, some scholars believe that the government should optimize the system of returning home to start businesses, establish related social organizations and groups, and improve the ideological construction of college students. [6] Similarly, it is also important to optimize the entrepreneurial environment and improve the supportive policies for rural returning youth. [7] Based on this, this paper, on the basis of previous studies and from the perspective of social network theory, focuses on how college students use social network to start businesses when return to rural areas. III. ECOLOGICAL STATUS QUO OF RURAL COLLEGE STUDENTS RETURNING HOME TO START BUSINESSES A. Basic condition of town D Town D is located in the southeast suburb of county C, city H, Shandong province. Before 2015, town D had a township administration system, with 32 administrative villages and 86 natural villages under its jurisdiction. It has a registered population of 44,500, a total area of 45 square kilometers, and a cultivated land area of about 50,000 mu. Up to now, there are a total of more than 6,000 returned entrepreneurs, including nearly 700 college students, more than 3,000 migrant workers, and over 28,000 directly or indirectly engaged in the ecommerce industry. In this paper, the author selected his hometown for research and conducted in-depth interviews with 5 returning entrepreneurial college students from town D and government officials (B1) with a “snowball method”. Semi-structured interviews were conducted according to the interview outline designed in advance and recorded with the consent of the author. The details of the interviewees are shown below. TABLE I. BASIC INFORMATION OF THE RESEARCH OBJECT No. Age Gender Education Years of business Reasons for return Types of online shop N1 25 Male College degree 3 Self-determined Costume N2 27 Female Bachelor degree 2 Self-determined Costume N3 29 Male Bachelor degree 3 Parents’ request Costume, Han Chinese Clothing N4 31 Female College degree 3 Parents’ request Costume, woodwork N5 33 Male College degree 4 Self-determined Costume B. Characteristics of college students start their own businesses in town D 1) The proportion of college students returning home to start businesses increases year by year In recent years, with the increasingly severe employment situation of college students and the widening employment gap, more and more college students begin to think out of the original employment framework to seek self-employment and return home for employment. Since 2014, the number of college students returning to D town to start businesses has been increasing, rising from 434 to 700. In addition, the government attaches great importance to the movement, takes the development of e-commerce and the cultivation of new rural citizens as the important focus of rural revitalization, and timely introduces various preferential policies to solve the problem of college students starting businesses in their hometowns, encouraging more college students choose to return home and start businesses. 2) Male accounts for a large part in the entrepreneurs in town D Among the students returning home, both genders climb year on year, and male students outnumber female counterparts. Since 2014, male has increased from 301 to 490, and female from 133 to 210. In view of the gender differences, male in rural areas may shoulder more responsibilities of families, and choose to go back to home due to parents’ traditional concept. Men are under more pressure than women as they need to support their parents. In addition, the pressure in the city also force them to go home. 3) More job opportunities drive farmers’ income The Internet provides a opportunity for returning college students to start their own businesses with low cost and low threshold. That they start their own businesses in rural areas with the help of e-commerce brings job opportunities to neighbor villages and alleviates the problem of left-behind children and the left-behind elderly in rural areas to a certain extent. For example, in the clothes processing workshop of Taobao industrial park, the workers are mainly women, and the elderly. The women who originally go out to seek jobs now can earn money near home, while taking care of the family and children. Through e-commerce, college students sell costumes to all over the world to promote the development of local industries and directly bring economic income to local residents. As a result, the per capita net income of town D is higher than that of the county. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 322