Digital talent continues to increase in China, as a component of the workforce, according to LinkedIn's latest report. However, there's nowhere near enough digital talent in China, based on Allen Blue, VP of product management and co-founder of LinkedIn.

The report is based on information drawn from about 910,000 qualified respondents of LinkedIn's 48 million members in China. From 2016 to 2018, the proportion of digital talent in software and IT services, finance, education and other service industries increased year-on-year.

"When we actually zoomed in on the top five locations – Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hangzhou – those cities were all effectively competing for the same pool of talent," Blue told CGTN on the sidelines of the World Internet Conference.

Blue stated that those top cities have witnessed an increase in the concentration of tech talent – from just over 60 percent to about 70 percent in the last couple of years. And each city is attracting and building up a core of talent while industrial distribution is the main difference among appeals, he added.

"So you can see a city like Shenzhen becoming where hardware is a big deal, attracting talent directly to come work in that industry. And that has very interesting implications for the future and actually for any economy where talent clusters in a single place," he said.

The report also highlights the increase in talent in artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain (AB talent). Blue commented that the cutting-edge technologies, like AI and blockchain, are attracting more people and they're dragging in more and more of that talent.

"For the companies that are doing they're hiring right now, AI and blockchain are the places where things are growing the most quickly. These are the place where the greatest opportunities lie for the companies. The demand is very strong for AI and blockchain right now," he explained.

Meanwhile, the report shows that the growth of computing and data science talent (CD talent) is a little bit slower than that of AB talent. But Mr. Blue is positive on the future of CD talent, saying that the need of CD talent across sectors in China has just begun to appear.

"Cloud computing and data science will continue to be important, as the world of digital talent spreads outside software, engineering and hardware, the traditional centers for ICT. So we're going to continue to need those," he forecasted.

Considering today's education can hardly satisfy the huge demand for digital talent, Blue suggested that "figuring out a way to train talent is going to be the key."

And he further advised educators and companies to cooperate in terms of building an effective lifetime learning environment.

"It turns out that workplace is a great place to learn specific hard skills and soft skills. But education may not be able to keep up with the rate of change. So the two might be able to play hand in glove to be able to build what is effectively a lifetime learning environment. So that we can all re-skill when our companies need," he explained.

(CGTN's Michael Wang contributed to the story.)