Give skilled workers the respect they deserve

Compared with the recently concluded annual college entrance examinations, or gaokao, which was taken by 9.4 million students, a contest concurrently held in Shanghai and Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, that brought together youths from across the world for a skills' competition invited much less attention.

Most of the participants in the 2017 global skills' competition graduated from vocational schools. However, compared with those who passed gaokao and are considered by many as the "favored sons of God", the vocational school graduates seemed more proud of their professional skills. The event simultaneously held in Shanghai and Suzhou was the first large-scale global contest for skills hosted by China, which has participated in three previous such events and won five gold medals at the 43rd WorldSkills Match Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2015.

The importance attached by the Chinese government to skilled labor highlights its resolve to transform China from a "big manufacturing" to "powerful manufacturing" country, for which a large number of highly skilled workers are needed. According to media reports, skilled workers are in short supply in China, which, to a large extent, can be attributed to the lack of social respect for skilled labor.