China Daily:

Having talent with professional skills is important in promoting economic and social development. The WorldSkills Competition has just concluded and Chinese contestants have excelled in this event. What will China do to further promote the development of skilled talents? Thank you.

Zhang Jinan:

Thank you for your concerns about the development of talents with professional skills. The WorldSkills Competition is also being called "WorldSkills Olympics.” Back in 2011 when China first participated in this event, we left with just one silver medal. This year, Chinese contestants won 16 gold medals, 14 silver medals, and five bronze medals, ranking top in the gold medal list, the medal table, and the list of groups' total score. This is China's highest-ever ranking since 2011.

Not long ago, General Secretary Xi Jinping gave important instructions, fully recognizing the achievements of Chinese contestants in this event, and setting a higher standard for the further development of Chinese talents with professional skills. This provides a fundamental basis for our work in this field.

From a national perspective, developing talents with professional skills is important to support the endeavor to create "made in China” and "created in China” products and services. In addition, for businesses, talents with professional skills are the key foundation to improve its competitiveness. For employees, professional skills are also an important pre-requisite to find high-quality employment. The next step to develop talents with professional skills can be summarized into these three aspects:

First, we will focus on one goal put forward by General Secretary Xi Jinping, which is to "speed up the training of a large number of high-quality workers as well as technical and skilled talents.”

Second, we will adhere to the principle of a "three factor-oriented” approach. First is an "ability-oriented” approach that focuses on improving employees' skills, abilities, and capacity. Second is a "market-oriented” concept that training should be closely linked to the needs of society, industries, enterprises, and the need for personal development. Finally, a "problem-oriented” approach will also be adopted to address problems that exist in the training of skilled talents.

Third, we will highlight the "four aspects of enhancement.” 

First is to improve vocational training. We will step up our efforts to carry out large-scale vocational training, and have made a three-year plan to use the balance of 100 billion yuan in unemployment insurance as subsidies to train 50 million personnel. This plan is called "Project 315.” 

Second, we will make further institutional reform on the development of talents with professional skills. The reform will focus on establishing a mechanism for talent training, employment, evaluation, and incentive. This is the key to promote the development of talent.

Third, we will work to organize more competitions involving professional skills. As efforts are now being made to plan for the all-round national skills competition, we will also be committed to organizing the 46th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai. 

The last aspect is to strengthen our publicity on talent development. Over the past few years, the CPC and the Chinese government have placed great importance on the development of talent, and the general situation has improved. However, the idea of "emphasizing degrees and theories while neglecting abilities and practices” still exist to a certain extent. This needs to be addressed in our publicity work.