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Growth spurt
Officials look to U.S. expertise to get their workers up to speed
China has 480 million blue-collar workers, but only 150 million of those have skills needed in a fast-modernizing society, a high-ranking Chinese official said on a Bay Area visit. That is both a political and economic problem for China and a business opportunity for U.S. companies, he said.
Jian Xiong, assistant secretary general of the National Association of Vocational Education of China, a rough equivalent of this country's Job Corps, said China has set up a pilot program to teach English to Chinese laborers. If the privately held New Orient Co., which runs the association's English language program in China, succeeds in this endeavor, Beijing may open its vocational educational system to foreign investors.
"New Orient Co. has foreign investment money,'' he said, without disclosing names of funders. "If it works, we will open" the vocational education system.
As yet, China, which is still officially socialist, is proceeding cautiously in reforming its educational system, Xiong said. He was in San Francisco earlier this month prior to visiting a large Job Corps training center in Santa Clara and a vocational training center in San Jose.
"China won't take the dramatic steps that Russia took" to quickly privatize its economy, said Xiong, who was accompanied on his U.S. tour by Marin County businessman Ben Tse, who acted as his interpreter. "We do it step by step. If you don't do it step by step, it's going to be chaos.''
China has a big labor challenge on its hands, Xiong acknowledged. Although Beijing is privatizing its economy gradually, the sale or closure of inefficient, state-owned enterprises has thrown tens of millions of laborers and farmers out of work. It is chiefly these workers, who often push into China's burgeoning cities in a desperate search for jobs, who need to learn new skills in a hurry, he said.
"No skills, no job,'' Xiong said.
Without jobs for its huge and restless workforce, China is faced with housing, feeding and placating millions of unemployed and potentially rebellious displaced people.
The vocational education association, established in Shanghai in 1917 and now based in Beijing, is the lead agency for turning ex-farmers and laborers into nurses, laboratory technicians and other skilled workers. One of a handful of institutions to survive the Communist Revolution of 1949 intact, it is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, albeit one that is run mainly by party members.
According to Xiong, the association's second-ranking executive, the organization is often approached by foreign multinational companies in China who need well-trained Chinese workers to staff their local operations.
"Last year, a German company wanted the association to help train 200 nurses,'' Xiong said. "The Coca-Cola Co. turned to us to find skilled laborers for their repair and maintenance operations.''
But while the demand for skilled workers is growing, the association -- which oversees 3,000 small vocational schools scattered around China -- isn't turning out enough graduates who measure up to the highest international standards.
That was the reason for Xiong's visit to the United States. He toured the Job Corps site in Santa Clara to bone up on U.S.-style job training, met with officials at the Import-Export Bank of the United States in Washington to encourage government funding for U.S. companies in China, and talked to state and local officials in Atlanta to tout opportunities in the Chinese market.
"We welcome any fund, organization or entity that wants to help China,'' Xiong said. "We're looking for businesses that are profitable and also meaningful. I'm for making money and education for the benefit of society.''
E-mail David Armstrong at davidarmstrong@sfchronicle.com.
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