East China's Jiangsu Province will select some outstanding young technicians to be crowned as the province's leading young professionals. This move is expected to change the attitude towards manual labour, which many people regard as inferior to mental work, said an article in Guangming Daily. An excerpt follows:

The Jiangsu Provincial Personnel Bureau recently announced that it will award 35 young technicians with the title of the "province's leading experts" for their remarkable contributions and expertise in certain fields.

Jiangsu's move is really inspiring and thought-provoking given that most of the nation's developed cities gravely lack skilled workers.

Admittedly, such thinking as "value academic credentials, belittle technical skills" is still a dominant mentality in China. Some people mistakenly believe that, in the present knowledge-based economy, the more academically inclined you are, the higher the social standing you should enjoy. When recruiting new staff, some companies focus exclusively on the candidates' diploma, listing their top criteria as "above-bachelor only" or even "only for masters and PhDs."

Influenced by this morbid mentality, lots of parents do not want their children to become skilled workers and courses for technical skills are often neglected by most schools. Symptoms of this problem are emerging, such as an acute shortage of skilled workers in some industrial zones such as the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta.

Skilled workers are a strong force to push forward economic and social development. Although they might not have a glorious academic background, they have played an indispensable role in the nation's development.

In some foreign countries, senior technicians account for one-third to two-fifths of the total number of skilled workers, while in China only 4 per cent of technicians are senior ones. As such, it is imperative that China should acknowledge the importance of technician workers, providing more training and better pay for them.

In this sense, Jiangsu has set a good example for the entire nation.

(China Daily December 1, 2004)