The shortage of senior technical talents has become a bottleneck for China to realize its ten-year "Made in China 2025" action plan, which was published in May 2015.
Cultivating an adequate number of talents is one of the hot topics during the fourth session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top political advisory body, which lasts from March 3 to 14.
When Beijing Review interviewed some CPPCC members on the subject, this is what they said:
Sun Taili, member of the 12th National Committee of the CPPCC, chairman of the Tianjin Qingda Group
"Talents are the foundation of a manufacturing power. Without skilled technical people, production efforts will be stymied, even with quality designs. Germany's current manufacturing experience tells that only high-quality workers that have been cultivated through vocational education can support the manufacturing industry's development."
Guo Dacheng, member of the 12th National Committee of the CPPCC, former secretary of the party committee at the Beijing Institute of Technology
"China's higher vocational education system would be a failure if it was another copy of its higher educational system. The market has increasingly been in need of senior technical talents in recent years. In Shenzhen, [in south China's Guangdong Province], there have been senior technical workers receiving annual incomes of a million yuan ($153,000). Therefore, I believe that there will be more people aware of the significance of vocational education and become such talents under the leverage effect of the market on the higher-vocational education evaluation system."
Copyedited by Bryan Michael Galvan
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