Vocational education and the new generation of working class in China

Increasing number of vocational school students are found in factories in China. They work on non-stop standardized assembly lines as other formally employed labour in the name of taking ‘internships’. Most of them are not protected by formal labour contract nor social insurance scheme. When the government encourages close cooperation between vocational training schools and enterprises in developing the quality of human resources in China, a stable supply of cheap and compliant young labour force is secured for the use of the capital. This paper looks at the development of vocational training education during the post-reform era and investigates the growing connections between vocational schools and private enterprises in recent years. Given the increasing scale and the growing importance of vocational training in the Chinese education system, this paper explore the ways that students, especially those in vocational track, are prepared as a new generation of working class in China.