Chinese youth forge ahead with skills, innovation, entrepreneurship

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- From world-class machining workshops to high-tech robotics labs and cornfields in central China, young Chinese are building, creating and adapting with both their hands and the help of new technologies.

What emerges from this spirit and hard work is a generation that is not retreating, but redefining success on its own terms.

In September, Shanghai in east China will host the 48th WorldSkills Competition, often called the "Olympics of vocational skills." More than 1,500 competitors from about 73 countries and regions are expected to attend. Seven new events have been added, including drone systems, smart security and digital interactive media design.

One of China's strongest events is CNC milling -- a test of industrial precision where the allowable error is just 0.02 millimeters, roughly a quarter of the width of a human hair. China has won gold in this category for five consecutive competitions, every time by a competitor from the same school: Guangdong Machinery Technician College, located in south China.

Long Weijie, the post-2000s winner at Lyon 2024, was born into a rural family and entered a vocational school after middle school. He struggled in provincial contests and nearly failed early on. But Long kept going, drawing blueprints as early as 6 a.m. and training for 17,000 hours over four years.

In Lyon, his years of hard work paid off as he held his nerve to claim the gold medal. Turning down high-paying job offers afterward, he chose to remain a teacher and coach. In April 2025, Long received the China Youth May Fourth Medal, the youngest awardee last year.

Now the baton has been passed to his younger schoolmate, Li Zhuoping, who will compete in Shanghai in September. At the college's training base, days are filled with relentless fine-tuning, as every movement and each measurement is polished to perfection in the hunt for a sixth straight gold.

Youth employment, notably, remains a top government priority in China. In March, Chinese authorities unveiled a package of policy measures to promote the employment of college graduates and other young groups, calling for efforts to tap the employment potential of leading enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises that use specialized and sophisticated technologies, particularly in sectors such as advanced manufacturing and modern services.

This document stresses the need to step up job training and implement an internship recruitment plan. It also calls for the development of training programs in emerging fields of new quality productive forces like AI, new energy vehicles and the low-altitude economy.

Beyond traditional jobs, many young people are launching their own ventures. In Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province, 26-year-old Min Yuheng leads Zerith, a Hefei-based robotics firm.

Founded in January 2025, the firm was producing 100 humanoid robots a month by December. Now with more than 130 employees and having completed multiple rounds of financing totaling several hundred million yuan, Zerith has placed its wheel-based service robots in airports, malls and hotels across 20 cities.

Hefei's startup ecosystem has grown rapidly. Over the past five years, the city has added an average of 380 new business entities and three national high-tech firms per day. Over the past three years, an average of 350,000 university graduates have come to Hefei each year for employment or entrepreneurship.

To encourage even more young company founders, the Chinese government launched an entrepreneurship competition in Anhui in February this year, featuring the four tracks of science, industry, vocational skills and people's livelihoods, as well as a special youth innovation category. Each track sends 120 projects to the national selection round, and 50 will make it to the finals, with winners receiving funding, workspace and incubation support.

Data from the State Administration for Market Regulation shows that by the end of 2025, 1.73 million young Chinese had started businesses in wholesale and retail, up 8.4 percent from 2021. Another 213,000 were in scientific research and technical services and 526,000 in culture, sports and entertainment. The number of new livestreaming e-commerce firms and self-employed vendors also surged last year.

At the same time, facing intense competition in big cities, some young people are returning to their hometowns, bringing new ideas to serve rural revitalization.

In August 2025, central China's Henan Province hired 5,000 university graduates as rural revitalization assistants. Zhu Yuting, 22, was one of them. "Coming back to my hometown to work and taking part in rural revitalization makes me proud," she said.

Village Party Secretary Zhu Wandang is delighted: "We're a big village of 3,000 people, but our five cadres are too old. We desperately needed young people because they learn fast and think creatively."

Zhu Yuting has already made plans to help villagers understand policies better and care for the many "left-behind" children whose parents work far from home.

Another new assistant in Fengqiu County, 23-year-old Zhao Keqing, majored in broadcasting and television production. She was asked to make a promotional video for her village and finished it in just one afternoon. Village officials have described such young assistants as "treasures" in the quest for rural revitalization.

"Young talent have been sent to the villages, and we look forward to seeing them make a big difference," said an official.