For example, 44-year-old Xu Yingjie, a graduate of the semiconductor department of the China Science and Technology University, was a researcher in Shanghai. He was recruited to work for the Xiamen-Wang Computer Co. Ltd. in 1984. His diligence earned him a good reputation at the joint venture and in 1985 he was promoted to deputy manager of the company.

Training programmes

Since the SEZ was established in 1980, Xiamen has been very active in training personnel. One successful effort was the opening of a foreign economic relations and trade college. Since its setup in 1982, more than 100 cadres engaged in foreign trade work have been trained. Of the 60 graduates of the first training class, 47 have become leading cadres at various levels.

Another training process was to establish the Lujiang Vocational University in 1981, which has nine departments, including foreign languages and trade, customs, business and management. Its students pay tuition on their own and live off campus. Upon graduation, they are recruited by enterprises. It has 818 students today, and its 373 graduates are currently working in Xiamen.

Xiamen University also provides special training programmes of two to three years in foreign languages, international finance and accounting.

At the middle school level, 10 vocational schools have been established and vocational classes in another 10 regular middle schools have been opened to train students in special fields considered useful by the local enterprises and companies. At least 46 percent of the students in Xiamen are enrolled in these schools. Ninety percent of the 2,000 graduates from these schools are currently employed in Xiamen.

Foreign-owned factories and co-operative enterprises also are being encouraged to start up training schools for their employees. The Xiamen Sensitive Materials Co. Ltd., supplied with advanced equipment from the United States' Kodak Co., is still under construction. Though it is not scheduled to go into operation until 1987, the company already has been providing pre-work training for its employees. Another example is the Xiamen Supertronics, Ltd. financed solely by Hongkong businessmen, which is running a four-year study programme for its employees that includes university courses.

The Xiamen leadership has been active in pursuing a special educational network centred around the television university programme, which is attended by spare-time university and correspondence students. These involve more than 55,000 students; more than 6,000 factory workers have taken part in higher-education examinations in the past two years.

Sanguine, enterprising people

China's recent policy of opening to the world and implementing economic reforms have been altering both the economic outlook and the social practice of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone. From interviews with the employees and residents of the zone in Fujian Province, one gets the impression that every aspect of life in Xiamen is in transition: The way of thinking, personal relations, and social conduct are all vacillating somewhere between the old and new.

Dedicated to work

The expansion of the zone to include the entire Xiamen Island, and the introduction of flexible policies have offered ambitious and competent people an opportunity to assert themselves.

Liu Hong is just such a man. The 29-year-old Liu is now the chief engineer of the Xiamen Southeast Electronics Industry Co. When he and a dozen others came to Xiamen to create the company in 1984, Liu was the chief engineer of the Fujian Provincial Computer Research Institute. He had been cited on several occasions by the State Economic Commission and the Chinese Academy of Sciences for his participation in the research of multi-function Chinese character micro-computers.

The day Liu was interviewed, he was teaching several college graduates how to use microcomputers.