China's employment authorities have opened up the country's
vocational training to foreign investment so as to meet a growing
demand for skilled workers.
A regulation, issued by the Ministry of Labor and Social
Security, effective from October 1, allows foreign education
institutions to cooperate with Chinese counterparts.
"The Chinese institutions and programs must not profit from the
training activities," said Wang Yadong, deputy director of the
ministry's Employment Training Department.
There are 330,000 job vacancies for skilled workers, such as
millers and welders, each year in Beijing, but there was a dearth
of qualified people, and the situation is the same all over the
country, Wang said.
Chinese institutions with foreign cooperation must be able to
train at least 200 people at one time, and the fixed assets and
registered capital of the institutions must exceed 500,000 yuan
(US$62,500), according to the regulation.
While university graduates have been scrambling for jobs in
recent years, the employment rate of secondary vocational school
graduates remains high, statistics from the Ministry of Education
show.
From 2001 to 2005, the employment rate was 95 percent on
average, and the average salary of graduates of secondary
vocational schools was higher than college graduates this year in
the cities of Harbin, Hangzhou and Chengdu.
The central government will invest 10 billion yuan in the
infrastructure of vocational education over the next five years and
local governments will spend more than 20 billion yuan in the
initiative.
(Xinhua News Agency August 18, 2006)