The crunch of skilled labour is hampering Beijing’s dreams of becoming a manufacturing hub as most domestic and foreign firms are relocating their operations outside China, according to The HK Post.
Less-educated and low-income workers make up about 70 percent of the workforce. The increasing cost of labour and Beijing’s promotion of automation have disproportionately affected China’s low-skilled workforce. On the one hand, the increase in the wages of low-skilled labour due to its shortage has forced several major domestic and foreign firms to relocate their operations to lower-wage countries or to eschew expansion plans in China, leaving large numbers of China’s low-skilled labourers unemployed.
On the other hand, the automation push by Beijing in the form of the use of robotics to boost industrial productivity, eliminate inefficient manual processes, and increase the efficiency of domestic manufacturing has put at risk the jobs of at least 100 million low-skilled workers.
Most of them work in sectors such as agriculture and textile manufacturing that rely on autonomous equipment to boost output.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to transform the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s economy into a global centre of advanced manufacturing face a major challenge today in the form of a shortage of skilled labour, especially, the low-skilled.
Inadequate vocational training opportunities are one of the major reasons for the crisis. Beijing’s non-university up-skilling program, which has been retraining millions of low-skilled workers since 2019, is probably languishing because of corruption, foreign firms’ lack of interest in establishing advanced vocational schools in the PRC, and a dearth of workers with the foundational knowledge needed to enrol in the programme, reported The HK Post.
Besides, the PRC’s vocational school system has outdated content, a shortage of teaching expertise, and a high dropout rate because of underinvestment in education and a lack of enforced accountability standards.