High-quality workforce in the making to propel China’s sustainable growth
HARBIN, May 5, (Xinhua): Located in the suburban area of the city of Harbin in Heilongjiang Province in northeast China, Feihe Dairy’s intelligent industrial park, featuring many glass walls, looks more like an exhibition center than a busy factory.
Walking around the park covering an area of over 360,000 square meters, not many workers can be seen -- except for some researchers involved in experiments in a lab and several monitoring staff sitting in the central control center.
The factory conducts 24-hour fullprocess tracking and monitoring, as well as 25 inspection procedures and 411 tests, throughout the processing of fresh milk into finished products. The vast base employs only about 200 people, as highly automated production has turned the production base into what is often called a Dark Factory, hinting at having no need for lights due to the lack of direct human input in the production process.
The industrial park also showcases China’s first automatic production line for lactoferrin, a breakthrough achieved after six years of research and development (R&D). The dairy brand saw its R&D investment grow at a compound annual rate of 41 percent during the 2018-2023 period.
Scenes like this can be seen in a growing number of sectors in China, with automatic and digital transformation, empowered by enhanced investment in innovation, reducing the previous heavy reliance on manual labor, but resulting in a need for more techsavvy people.
Despite dips in the working population, China still boasts a vast workforce that is lending fresh steam to the country’s economic growth with increased professional know-how, highly practical skills and stronger R&D capabilities. A labor army consisting of a more innovative and productive workforce is in the making.
The Chinese government has recognized the nurturing of skilled personnel as an important strategy and task in promoting the development and utilization of human resources, as well as a key pillar needed to underpin China’s industrial upgrading.