Think tank experts and economists say China maintains its advantage for high-quality development based on its volume of high-level talent and the country's investment in talent cultivation.  

China has established the world's largest higher education system with 240 million people having received higher education out of its 1.4 billion population, according to data released by the Education Ministry last May. 

"We need to turn the population dividend to talent dividend," Wang Yaoqing, director of Center for China and Globalization, said in an interview with CGTN. 

He added that China has around 12 million college graduates entering the workforce each year, who are more competitive when facing the challenge brought by the rapid development of technologies such as artificial intelligence. 

'Talent dividend' forming 

China has 900 million people of working age, and the average number of years of education for the working-age population is 10.9 years, with new entrants into the workforce having 14 years of education on average, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said during a press conference on March 13.

In fact, the country has underscored the importance of education, science and technology, and human resources as the foundational and strategic pillars for building a modern socialist country in all respects, as noted in the report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

China's total expenditure on research and development (R&D) crossed the 3-trillion-yuan mark to reach nearly 3.09 trillion yuan ($456 billion) in 2022, up 10.4 percent year on year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced in January.

The government has also been investing heavily in education. In 2022, China's fiscal spending on education remained above 4 percent of its GDP for 10 consecutive years, which has laid the foundations for the emergence of the country's high-quality labor force.

Every penny of that expenditure has been allocated in detail. From a subsidy of 3,000 yuan per student in extreme financial difficulty for those in northeast China's Jilin Province to projects supporting the training of 260,000 skilled and high-skilled professionals to attract talents in central China's Hubei Province, each area has put in place clear instructions for talent cultivation.

Decades of effort in talent training

China has significantly improved the education level of its massive population over the decades to help contribute to the country's high-quality economic development.

The seventh national population census in 2020 showed people aged over 15 had received education for an average of 9.91 years, climbing from 9.08 years 10 years ago, with the illiteracy rate falling from 4.08 percent in 2010 to 2.67 percent. 

There are 15,467 people with college education among every 100,000 people in China, ranking first in the world in terms of growth scale and speed.

As one of the world's most populous countries, China's human resource competitiveness boomed in the past 20 years.

The country has over 40,000 people who work on key national projects or are members of the CAS and CAE, which are China's highest academic positions in science and engineering.

Among the talents, 1,169 people were selected on the Highly Cited Researchers List, accounting for 16.2 percent of the total and sitting second around the world.

In addition, the number of skilled professionals in China surpassed 200 million as highly-skilled professionals doubled to over 60 million compared to 2012.

"That is a fundamental force that China has going forward," Tim Dyson, a professor of population studies at London School of Economics, said in an interview with CGTN. He noted that the country's declining birth rate can lead to easier access to education resources and improve the level of human capital.

(CGTN's Zhao Chenchen, Liu Wei contributed to the story.)