Chinese government pins hope on new technology innovations to bolster its employment-first policy

The Third Plenum of the 20th the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, convened in July, said that the government will take multiple measures to support the job market.

Analysts said that China has a solid foundation to ramp up employment as the ongoing economic upgrade and transformation will fuel the development of new productive forces, leading to new forms of business and creating a greater number of new jobs which will help broad employment.

According to the communique adopted by the CPC Central Committee's Third Plenum, China will adopt an employment-first policy, while improving the nation's social security system.

"We will improve the system of employment support for key groups such as college graduates, rural migrant workers, and ex-service members and the system of lifelong vocational skills training," read the resolution on comprehensively deepening reform to advance Chinese modernization.

Officials will coordinate urban and rural employment policies, advance service reforms related to household registration, human resources, and personnel records, improve the policy environment to boost employment by encouraging startups, and support and regulate the development of new forms of employment.

"We will build a sound social security system to serve people in flexible employment, rural migrant workers, and those in new forms of employment," the resolution said.

Chinese analysts noted that employment concerns the quality of life, and it is of great importance for the government and the enterprises to work together to provide most jobs for the needy.

Tech-savvy entrepreneurs

The steady development of the new quality productive forces has played a significant role in stabilizing the labor market, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow with the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Driven by ground-breaking technological innovations, the ongoing manufacturing and service sector transformation and upgrade in China will help release new market demand that is expected to create many new and high-paying jobs, Wang Peng said.

Wang Enjie, from a rural area in Hubei Province, is a young representative who has experienced this great transformation. To some extent, he is no longer a farmer in the traditional sense.

Wang Enjie and his peers are mostly tech-savvy, using new digital innovations and business models they have mastered in cities to revamp traditional farming, improve agricultural production efficiency, and creating new jobs in rural areas.

Wang Enjie, after quitting his job at a laptop manufacturing company in Shanghai, returned to Zigui county in Central China's Hubei in 2016 to help build up an e-commerce venture in his hometown. He is now the general manager of Zigui Weichu Cloud Warehouse Logistics Service Co and secretary-general of Zigui's E-commerce Association.

Zigui is known as the "hometown of Chinese navel oranges." However, the county officially emerged from poverty as recently as 2019, thanks to new internet technology that makes naval orange cultivation, picking, sorting and transportation much easier.

"Sorting used to be a labor-intensive work requiring years-long experience to judge the sugar and water content of navel oranges. It's a different picture now. An electronic system is quick enough to sort about 600 oranges in just one minute," Wang Enjie said.

At Weichu's processing factory, robotic arms and artificial intelligence-empowered electronic recognition system now handle, clean, screen and sort the oranges. The plant can now process about 200 tons of navel oranges per day.

Liu Yang, a drone operator helping farmers transport oranges from mountains to nearby roads, returned from Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, to his hometown in Zigui's Pengjiapo village in 2021.

"In one minute, the drone can transport 50 to 60 kilograms of navel oranges from the mountaintop to the truck parked at the foot of the mountain. The journey used to take 40 minutes using the labor-intensive way - a person climbing down the steep slope carrying a fully-loaded basket," Liu told the Global Times.

By 2025, more than 15 million entrepreneurs will return to their hometowns to start businesses, according to an outline of agricultural and rural talent team construction during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

"We now need many professional workers who can operate computer numerical control machine (CNC)," Zhu Qiucheng, CEO of Ningbo New Oriental Electric Industrial Development, an exporter of furniture and home furnishing products, told the Global Times.

Zhu inherited a lumber mill from his father. Workers used to make furniture by hand. Now, all wood processing is done by CNC machine tools.

Waves of emerging jobs

Apart from manufacturing, analysts noted that China's fast-evolving service industries are also creating new types of jobs.

The digital economy has created new jobs. In recent years, the emergence of new jobs such as live-streamers, door-to-door chefs, and pet caretakers have attracted job seekers who are willing to devote themselves to those "innovative" jobs.

For example, the modern navel orange industry in Zigui has created new jobs such as social media live-streamers who use internet technology to promote sales.

"Our company is seeking multilingual live-streamers to introduce our products to overseas markets, such as the Southeast Asian market and the South American market," said Zhu.

The services industry has a strong capability to accommodate labor force. Boosting services consumption is conducive to solving the current employment problem in China, which will create even more jobs in the future, Hu Qimu, deputy secretary-general of the Digital-Real Economies Integration Forum 50, told the Global Times on Sunday.

At present, while vigorously promoting economic development to create jobs and boost employment, it is also necessary to fully implement the government's employment-first policy so as to create more jobs for the young job-seekers, analysts noted.

And, the government's policies on taxation, bank loans, social security, business administration and market supervision need to be better coordinated to support a higher level of employment in the country.

China has implemented and improved policies on credit, taxation and employment subsidies and consistently ramped up support for the private economy, no matter they are micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses, to generate new jobs.