"We should implant the gene of entrepreneurship in the process of educating a student, and let he or she be aware of the choice of starting a business. ... Maybe in the future there will be a new Alibaba (the e-commerce giant founded by Ma) and Bill Gates," he said.

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Zhang said he was "thrilled" that the vice-minister mentioned his restaurant.

Zhang, who will graduate from Peking University in July, said he chose to be self-employed because he was not able to find an ideal job during job-hunting half a year ago.

"It's not easy to find a job you want, no matter which university you graduate from, due to the fierce competition," he said. So Zhang decided to sell rice noodles with three friends with a seed fund of about 100,000 yuan ($16,000) in early April.

The support for college students to start their own business is still far from enough, he said. There was no professional staff in his college to provide consultation related to entrepreneurship for students, he added, and the requirements for getting tax deductions were too high to meet.

Feng Lijuan, a human resource specialist from 51job.com, a major recruitment website in China, said entrepreneurship suits a minority of people. Feng urged college graduates to work as employees to accumulate some capital, work experience and human resources before trying to start up their own companies.