Nowadays in China, management talents and engineers may be in shortly supply, but China needs most is skilled workers and technicians.

As China’s manufacturing industry has developed so fast since the beginning of economic reforms 30 years ago, the demand for highly skilled blue-collar workers has been growing.

But traditionally, factory owners pay blue-collar workers, even highly skilled ones, unfairly low salaries compared with those at the management level.

Actually few workers are willing to spend the time and the effort to obtain skills which led to a shortage of technicians since the late 1990s.

In order to solve this problem, the government began to promote vocational education, which can reduce the pressure on universities and increase job opportunities for urban youth.

There were 11,570 secondary vocational schools around the nation with over 3 million students in 2003. The number of schools rose to 11,813 and students were more than 14 million in the year 2006. At the same time, the number of schools for skilled workers stood increased a lot from 2003 to 2006.

People’s Daily reported in 2006 that the central government planned to invest 10 billion yuan in vocational training in the 2006-10 periods, with an annual enrollment target of 8 million.

It is said that China will enroll 8.2 million students in secondary vocational schools this year. In order to attract more students to secondary vocational schools, the government will offer more financial support, build a better school management system and try to improve teacher training.

But the development of vocational education in China needs support from several aspects. And more important one is an improvement in salary levels and social status, which will automatically attract more urban youth to the factory.

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blue-collar, China, manufacturing, skilled, technician