Building a skilled future together

Editor's Note: Wang Yan, a special commentator for CGTN, is an associate research fellow at Beijing Foreign Studies University. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

What does it take to create our future? The recent 2026 World Vocational and Technical Education Development Conference, which brought together ministers, educators and industry leaders from over 100 countries in the northern city of Tianjin, offered an answer: TVET – technical and vocational education and training.

TVET is where opportunity begins for young people; it is the new currency of economic growth, and a catalyst for sustainable development and competitiveness.

China exemplifies this. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), China's economy grew at an average annual rate of around 5.4%, contributing about 30% of global economic growth. More than 70% of the high-quality skilled talent entering modern industries came through vocational education – turning China's demographic dividend into a skills dividend.

As Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang told the conference, China has improved its modern vocational education system, broadened pathways for young people to grow and succeed, strengthened talent support for industrial development, and deepened international exchanges and cooperation, driving a transformative change in the overall landscape of vocational education.

And China's progress has never been a solo exercise. Chinese TVET institutions have worked internationally through partnership-based cooperation, prioritizing local ownership, capacity development and lasting benefits for host communities. Together with governments, institutions and enterprises, they co-build training facilities, co-develop curricula, co-train teachers and co-deliver programs with assured quality.

A typical example is the Luban Workshop, named after China's legendary master craftsman Lu Ban. Since the first workshop opened in Thailand in 2016, a total of 38 Luban Workshops have been established across 32 countries. More than 30,000 students have benefited from over 100 programs.

In addition, China has implemented more than 500 cooperation projects in TVET in over 80 countries and regions.

China's vocational education vision

China runs the world's largest vocational education system, with over 10,000 institutions enrolling 30 million students. It positions TVET not as a second-tier educational option but as a core infrastructure of the real economy, at the intersection of employment policy, industrial strategy and social equity.

At the conference, themed "TVET: Co-Embracing Change, Co-Forging Standards, Co-Creating Future," Chinese Education Minister Huai Jinpeng highlighted how China has consistently upheld a vision of vocational education that "cannot be separated from economic and social development, and cannot be separated from people's all-round development." It has established a development orientation of "high-level institutional capacity and high-quality industry-education integration."

China's innovative operating system is structured around three pillars: First, the Ministry of Education has partnered with provincial governments on contextualized pilot reforms, exploring TVET models suited to each province and region. Second, municipal governments are empowered to build industry-education communities anchored in industrial parks. Third, for each industry, an industry-education integration community is coordinated jointly by a leading enterprise, a top-performing university and a vocational education institution.

This approach addresses a global policy challenge in vocational education: responsiveness to labor-market needs. Industry demand is the starting point for talent development and enterprises serve as key actors in cooperative education. Chinese vocational institutions collaborate with local enterprises, industry associations and industrial parks to deliver customized training, co-build industry schools, and organize skills competitions, enterprise internships and employee training programs.

The value of cooperation

The Luban Workshop model brings this approach to other parts of the world. Luban Workshops connect education directly with industry and facilitate the exchange of technical standards, teaching resources and practical expertise.

Chinese teachers work side by side with local instructors, co-developing curricula and training-of-trainers programs, so that skills transfer is sustainable. This localization ensures the programs serve local industrial development and lay the human foundation for deeper cross-border industrial collaboration.

Another widely adopted model integrates Chinese language learning with vocational skills. It combines language acquisition, technical training and intercultural understanding, ensuring that the capacity built through cooperation is locally owned, maintained and sustained by local partners after the external teachers depart.

When local teachers grow professionally, curricula are localized and standards are established, TVET capacity is genuinely institutionalized and sustained. This raises educational quality and contributes to the sustainable development of local economies and societies.

China's international cooperation in vocational education consistently focuses on the growth and development of people – youth, women, the unemployed and rural laborers – through diverse skills training, community skills services and online learning programs. Chinese vocational institutions are committed to making skills sharing more practical, targeted and sustainable, with outcomes that endure.

In Zambia, a young woman trained at a Chinese-run skills school became the first female graduate to earn a professional welder's certification, inspiring other young women to pursue technical careers. When one young person acquires a skill, a family's future can change; when a cohort of skilled talent emerges, an industry – or an entire region – can take off.

Global challenges and joint solutions

As Khondker Mohammad Talha, president of the UNESCO General Conference, warned in his remarks, in 2023, roughly one in five young people worldwide was not in employment, education or training, while employers around the world report skills shortages that hold back growth. Too many people struggle to access opportunities, while too many businesses struggle to find the skill sets they need.

The Beijing Agreement, released at the closing ceremony of the Tianjin conference, formulates the first international standard for vocational education. Developed through more than a year of consultations with education authorities, industries and associations, it will advance vocational education quality assurance and lifelong learning systems and facilitate the exchange and mutual recognition of vocational skills.

And the agenda does not stop at instruments and institutions. Huai proposed four commitments for the road ahead: consolidating development consensus and upholding the mission and value of global vocational education; co-forging quality standards to solidify the foundation of global vocational education; continuing to explore and innovate to shape a global vocational education development paradigm; and deepening practical cooperation to improve global vocational education governance.

International cooperation in TVET is like a tree: It takes root in the soil of local needs, draws strength from the industry around it, and flourishes when its fruits are shared by those who tended it. Every standard co-developed, every teacher trained, every young person who finds decent work – these are the rings in the trunk, the record of what has been grown together. When the ideas, visions and initiatives grow into a forest across the region, it will offer shelter to generations to come.

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