Amid US-China rivalry, Chinese parents’ dragon dreams for their children need an adjustment

By directing more young people to vocational schools, China is trying to meet future labour needs, particularly in industries where competition with the US is intense
Parents, however, will have to recalibrate their hopes for their children and how they define success

April Zhang

Published: 4:30pm, 13 Dec 2023

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There’s an old Chinese saying, wang zi cheng long, or wishing that one’s child becomes a dragon. It speaks volumes about Chinese parents’ desire for their children to succeed. Today, success tends to be defined as going to a good university and later securing a high-status job.

But, for many Chinese young people, this version of success has become increasingly hard to reach, because it goes against a trend in many countries in which technical skills are increasingly prized over a college degree.

Economies that wish to remain globally competitive must adapt. Recognising this, the Chinese government has been tweaking the education system, but its policy decisions have not gone down well with parents.

The Post recently published reports about Chinese parents burdened with the rising cost of schooling. One of the issues raised was that a policy enacted in 2017 has made it tougher for them to send their children to university.

The Ministry of Education policy dictates that about half of all junior high graduates go to vocational schools, and the rest to academic high schools. That means that if students are to go to a university, they must be in the top 50 per cent of their cohort and get into an academic high school first.

Chinese parents already try very hard to help their children get ahead. This 50 per cent elimination rate forces them to try even harder.

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After-school tutoring used to be the norm. But in 2021, the government made it illegal for private tutors to make profits by teaching school curriculum subjects. The intention was to reduce students’ workload and ease parents’ financial pressure.

However, it has not dissuaded many anxious parents, who are willing to pay hefty fees for illegal tutoring services. Today, not only are costs high, but parents also need to have connections to find underground service providers.

A growing number are formulating a plan B in case their children do not place in the top 50 per cent. Such plans often involve emigration and studying abroad.

Less well-off families cannot afford either of the above options. One can only imagine the powerlessness they feel.

The desire for their children to fulfil the socially accepted parameters of success has kept parents from reckoning with the reality that more college graduates are no longer what the world needs most. It is not-so-glorified skilled workers who are sought after.

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The US and China have been competing fiercely over key technologies. Both countries need skilled workers to realise their plans, and both are experiencing a serious shortage of them.

In the United States, for example, chip makers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Micron said earlier this year that a shortage of skilled workers had hampered their plans for manufacturing plants. A recent Wall Street Journal commentary highlighted that a simulation of a war between the US and China had showed that the US would struggle to ramp up its defence production. A shortage of skilled workers is a major obstacle. For instance, it could take three to five years to train a welder to work on a submarine.

In China, data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security forecasts a shortage of 30 million skilled workers by 2025.

The problem is the same, the solution different.

In the US, each entity deals with the problem in its own way. TSMC might have to bring in experienced technicians temporarily from Taiwan. Micron talked to community leaders and schools about how to nurture a local workforce as quickly as possible. In the defence arena, an expert suggested the Pentagon could pay contractors to maintain excess capacity and parts inventories, or use the capacity of allies.

US President Joe Biden tours the building site of TSMC’s new computer chip plant on December 6, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: AP

China is dealing with the issue at the centralised policy level. The 50-50 policy ensures that skilled workers are trained in a systematic way.

By directing more young people to vocational schools, China’s approach, unlike the US’, would solve the problem in the long term and for all manufactures. From today’s perspective, the educational policy change was visionary, coming before the trade war with the US started and before Western officials began talking about decoupling or de-risking. Unfortunately, this policy is in conflict with what many parents want.

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However, Beijing is unlikely to change the policy to pacify its people, when the US is trying to topple China from its current dominant position in the global supply chain.

The US is working hard to rebuild its industrial base, allocating billions of dollars to lure companies to build factories there. For now, a shortage of skilled workers hinders this effort, as TSMC and Micron have found, but no one knows whether the situation will persist.

Workers at a semiconductor wafer workshop of a company in the Western Science City in southwest China’s Chongqing municipality on August 24. Photo: Xinhua

Therefore, it is in China’s interest not only to maintain its dominance, but to strengthen it by bolstering advanced industries in tandem with technology development, such as nuclear reactor construction and space exploration. Sufficient skilled workers are essential for this strategy to work. The need for them will only increase, and their learning starts at vocational schools.

In short, vocational education is critical for China not to be crushed by the US, and to secure a peaceful future for its people.

Unfortunately, many Chinese parents are still chasing a dream that was relevant 20 years ago. Their vulnerability has been exploited by tutoring services and study abroad agencies.

How this mismatch can be resolved remains a delicate issue.

April Zhang is the founder of MSL Master and the author of the Mandarin Express textbook series and the Chinese Reading and Writing textbook series