Developing first-class technicians a priority

China is all set to improve knowledge, skills and innovative capability of its industrial workforce and cultivate a group of first-class technicians and skilled workers by 2035, according to officials.

The nation aims to foster about 2,000 national-level master artisans, 10,000 provincial-level ones and 50,000 city-level ones by 2035, said a guideline released by the central authorities on Monday.

The federation has so far awarded the title of national master artisans to 112 workers, and cultivated 9,200 provincial-level ones and 45,000 city-level ones, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions said during a news conference held on Friday.

Jiang Wenliang, deputy head of the federation's labor and economic affairs department, said that the federation has established nearly 300 innovation studios led by model workers or highly-skilled technicians.

"The 297 innovation studios will receive a one-time subsidy of 100,000 yuan ($14,000). This year, we plan to build 200 more such studios," he added.

Since the establishment of a fund targeting innovation projects in 2015, the federation said that it has issued about 54 million yuan subsidies to about 330 such projects, and completed projects have yielded 1,162 innovative achievements so far, said Jiang.

Starting from this year, the federation plans to raise the annual subsidy for innovation projects from 6.4 million yuan to 15 million yuan, he said.

In addition, through a campaign initiated in July last year, 32,000 model or senior technicians have visited enterprises, helped resolve 29,000 technical issues and trained nearly 350,000 regular employees.

Jiang said that the guideline has laid out a number of training and talent cultivation measures, such as encouraging universities and colleges to set up classes and advanced training courses for craftspeople, model workers and technical talents and calling on enterprises to roll out fundamental industrial skills training sessions for workers and devise development plans for talents.

He said that the first batch of leading industrial professionals have now enrolled in a training program that kicked off at Tsinghua University in Beijing in early September. Two more batches of workers will be selected and organized to receive overseas training in Finland.

Gao Fenglin, chief technical expert at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology and a national master artisan, said that highly-skilled workers should proactively take on the task of resolving complicated and bottleneck issues, as well as making use of innovation studios to cultivate other workers.

"They are also expected to help small-and-medium-sized enterprises to address problems in equipment and technologies to help promote their sustainable and high quality development," he added.