US-China tech war: Vocational schools could be key to fixing labour shortages
- The US and China are in a similar quandary when it comes to securing enough skilled labour to meet their technological goals
- Both could benefit from promoting vocational education and removing the stigma that comes from pursuing it instead of higher education
This is a strategic move that aims to mitigate US manufacturers’ struggles to hire skilled workers. As Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said last month, the US is “in the middle of a tremendous labour shortage”.
To make matters worse, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security estimates an additional drop of 35 million people in the next five years. In the past four decades, China has tapped into its massive population of low-wage labourers to become the world’s manufacturing hub for major technology companies.
Apple, for instance, produces more than 95 per cent of its iPhones, AirPods, Macs and iPads in China. Now, that era may be coming to an end.
China has two potential policy solutions. First, policymakers could speed up the installation of industrial robots on factory floors.
Moreover, even if the government could roll out robots faster, automation is still not advanced enough to be a viable alternative to highly skilled personnel. Apple has attempted to replace workers with robots, only to realise products such as the iPhone are still best assembled by hand. The lesson is that humans are better.
President Xi Jinping has promised to accelerate the construction of a modern vocational education system. However, from 2015 to 2021, some 3,900 vocational schools were closed. At the same time, more than 90 per cent of vocational school students said they believed their curriculum did not reflect industrial trends.
In Chinese society, vocational schools are still regarded by many as a place only for students who fail the academic-track high school entry exam. As a result, it is not surprising that about 70 per cent of vocational students said their greatest hurdle in job hunting was social recognition for their degrees.
It will take a combination of government funding, educational reform and cultural engineering to tackle the issues hobbling the development of China’s vocational education system.
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Across the Pacific, an analogous phenomenon is playing out in the US. Amanda Chu writes in the Financial Times that, after decades of “discouraging Americans from vocational work, construction companies warn [that] the country’s industrial policies and the labour market are headed for a collision”.
In response, Raimondo has urged semiconductor companies to collaborate with educational institutions to train 100,000 new technicians in the next 10 years. In addition, she argued the US needs to triple the number of graduates in science and engineering to successfully rebuild its semiconductor fabrication industry.
Direct public funding could boost innovation in the short term. However, research shows that increasing the supply of human capital remains the most effective policy tool for governments to sustain technological advancement in the long run.
All told, the US-China technology war could boil down to a contest for talent – not just for engineers working at the technological front lines but also the workers who construct the basis of those front lines in the first place. In other words, the quantity and quality of labour and scientists will ultimately shape the outcome of US-China technology competition and, with that, the contours of the 21st century.
Chin Hsueh is a Master of Science in Foreign Service candidate at Georgetown University