China's Vocational Education Develops Rapidly

����China's vocational education has made big strides in the past several decades, and there are now 4,400 schools compared with only four in the 1950s.

����About 700,000 students are graduated yearly and are employed in such industries as machinery, electronics, aviation and railways.

����The trained technicians are fresh blood injected continuously into the veins of China's economy, said an official with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

����Vocational schools also play an important role in helping 10 million laid-off workers from China's State-owned enterprises to regain employment.

����The ministry will help train 10 million layoffs in the coming three years, and at present, 6.09 million laid-off workers thus trained have been re-employed.

����The high-quality of the schools' students has caught the attention of more and more Chinese companies which often sent their staff to the schools for re-training.

����In today's market economy, China's vocational schools have become more responsive to social needs than they were in the planned economy, the official said. (Xinhua)