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China to Train Thousands of Top Professionals
China plans to train thousands of top scientists, engineers, theorists, and especially young and middle-aged scientists, in the coming five to 10 years to meet the increasing demand for professionals.
Zhang Xuezhong, vice-minister of personnel, said Wednesday that China, which is expected to join the World Trade Organization soon and is in the process of building a market economy, is in great need of elite professionals, such as scientists, engineers and theorists.
Under a program formulated by the ministry, in the next five or ten years China will strive to train several hundred top scientists, engineers and theorists in their specific fields, and several thousand leaders in specific sciences in China.
Zhang said China also plans to train tens of thousands of young and middle-aged professionals with outstanding professional skills.
Wang Zhongyu, State Councilor and the secretary general of the State Council, on Tuesday described the program as an important decision by the Chinese leadership based on the economic and social development law, following a comprehensive review of the international and domestic situations at the turn of the centuries.
The vice-minister said China will put more resources into training and sponsoring the would-be professionals, and make great efforts to improve their working and living conditions.
The people being trained will be provided with academic assistants and given important jobs to gain experience and maturity, said the vice-minister.
China will implement a certified professional skill qualification system step-by-step and in a planned way, he said.
"Priority will be given to the establishment of systems for certified engineers, information technology and quality control professionals, various brokers, and advisory, financial, securities and insurance industry professionals, which are urgently needed in China's emerging market economy."
In the coming five years, he added, China will deepen the reform of its personnel system, optimize its professional structure, quicken the pace of human resource development, and give more attention to the role of the market in distributing human resources, and put an end to the imbalanced distribution of professionals in different regions and industries.
Under the program, the total number of skilled personnel in China will be increased to 83.5 million by 2005, an increase of averaging 3.8 million a year, while the number of professionals will reach 54 million, up by averaging 3 million a year.
China is short of well-educated people, particularly in the high-tech sector and managerial personnel, after 22 years of rapid and sustained economic development, despite efforts to "Respect Knowledge, Respect Talent" and promote education.
Government departments, institutions, research and educational organizations, state-owned enterprises, and overseas-funded and privately-owned companies have competed for professionals in recent years.
As part of the efforts to alleviate the shortage, China has nearly doubled the number of university students enrolled in Chinese universities in the past two years.
Still, China plans to double the enrolment in universities to reach more than 4 million in the coming five years.
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