At the age of 17, Wang Qi has already secured a position at a large-scale machine tool factory while he is still a student at a technical school in the industrial city of Qiqihar, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

Having majored in computer numerical control (CNC), he has mastered the operation skills of producing semi-precision parts on a real production line.

"I'm proud of myself for being able to find a job at this age to support myself," said Wang.

Seeing Wang's change from a boy who idled around to a skilled worker, his brother Wang Tao also enrolled in the same technical school. He observed that the working conditions in the factory were not as daunting as he expected, and hoped that he could start his career in a factory in the near future.

In China, students who enter technical schools and colleges are usually those who didn't perform well in high school or college entrance exams. In technical schools, however, these frustrated students have regained their confidence in their future development, as China has been pushing the training of technical talents in recent years.

From 2021 to 2025, technical schools and colleges in China are expected to train at least 3.6 million students, with an employment rate of no less than 97 percent, according to a national plan for education of skilled workers released in December 2021. Among them, over 55 percent are expected to be highly skilled personnel, such as senior mechanic and senior technician.

At present, the total number of skilled workers in China exceeds 200 million, of which more than 60 million are highly skilled.

Building a talent pool

Located in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Qiqihar is a manufacturing base known for its industries.

In recent years, the city has turned to the precision and ultra-precision manufacturing technologies for upgrading the local industry, according to a 10-year development plan released by the local government in November 2020. The goal is to ensure it moves up towards the higher end of the value chain, delivering the most value with lower costs.

However, enterprises soon realized that, without creative, well-trained young workers, they can hardly achieve the ambitious goal of upgrading the city's manufacturing industry.

The trade union federation of Qiqihar took the lead in coordinating departments of human resources and education, building databases for young people's job expectations and enterprises' talent needs.

The order-based talent training model has been well-received by the city's technical schools and enterprises. Enterprises place talent orders in technical schools and students are trained accordingly, acquiring the most up-to-date skills by working in these enterprises. Cooperation between enterprises and schools has guaranteed a high employment rate - a key motive for young people to receive education there.

Ren Quanjing, vice chairman of Qiqihar's trade union federation, said over 50,000 students have enrolled in the city's technical schools in the past three years, with nearly half of them working in local enterprises.

"Until now, 143 talent orders have been made, covering nearly 5,000 students. Among them, over 3,000 have started working in enterprises," Ren added.

Breaking the career ceiling

The scale of China's manufacturing industry has ranked first in the world for 13 consecutive years. Talent crunch is faced by manufacturing enterprises nationwide as the whole sector is striving for transformation and upgrading.

As an effective measure to improve the quality of technical talent training, integration of working and learning processes will be adopted by 1,000 technical schools across the country by 2025, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS).

"Catalogs of majors in technical schools are continuously adjusted, adding new ones such as big data, artificial intelligence, and new energy vehicles," said Chen Yujie, associate research fellow of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security.

To truly retain young talent, another key lies in the opportunities for organizational advancement for technical employees.

China's blue-collar workforce are getting on in years, with about half of them aged over 40, a report published by Capital University of Economics and Business in January showed. Young people are less willing to work in the manufacturing sector, due to low pay, tough schedules and dim career prospects.

Since 2021, the MOHRSS has been piloting a new eight-grade vocational skills grading system for skilled workers. By adding two more grades at the top of the previous technical career ladder - master technician and chief technician - technical employees could get higher pay and more chances of promotion. More enterprises have adopted the new grading system since a formal guide was published last April.

Moreover, skilled workers are encouraged to take part in professional title evaluation, which was exclusive to professionals such as engineers and accountants. Provinces of Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, and Henan have introduced detailed policies to move forward the reform.

Chen said the reform of the evaluation system has added one more career ladder for skilled workers.