The Future of Work in China: Chasing Jobs

学徒
It’s a given that manufacturing automation, now and more so in the future, will displace millions of China’s factory workers with robots and automated machinery. It’s the feared outcome of Industry 4.0—the digitalization of manufacturing—that’s ramping up in all industrialized countries worldwide.

With artificial intelligence (AI) recently thrown into the Industry 4.0 mix, more than just factory workers will be getting displaced in the not-too-distant future. Three of Japan’s major banks (Mizuho Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group) have announced future departures of over 33,000 employees due to automation. In the U.S., Wells Fargo has just announced that it will shed 26,000 employees because of automation.

Displacements of workers in a country the size of China, especially with its population of 1.3 billion, might well magnify joblessness via automation to a level unseen in human history. Then again, it might not.

With the multi-billions of dollars China has spent over the past five years buying up some sixty-odd German technology companies, there is a hidden benefit locked away in these German acquisitions that just might be as important as the acquired technologies; a benefit especially important to the tens of millions of Chinese looking down the barrel of a pink slip.

Hiding in plain sight
The Germans call it “ausbildung”, meaning apprenticeship, but “a very special dual-learning apprenticeship system of standardized, superior training—both formally in schools plus on-the-job training” that allows its citizens to get recognized for specific jobs.

“In Germany, everything from selling cars to building pianos and harpsichords has its own practical technical schooling, testing and qualifications. It is a system that experts say allows a highly capable workforce to earn middle-class wages, enjoy job security and bring a high level of expertise to jobs that increasingly rely on more than just muscle, nimble fingers and endurance.” Every country could use a large dose of that.

“Ausbildung” is a readily accepted part of German culture and kept in very high regard by its industry and business.  In fact, “ausbildung” is institutionalized in every German company, including all those swept up in the great Sino-German sell off. In short, there’s an apprenticeship infrastructure extant in China that China can tap into to copy the Germans.

Of course, neither China nor anyone else, for that matter, will ever duplicate the robust Germanic brand of “ausbildung”, which has a lineage arching back to the 1520s with the Swiss-German Paracelsus. Paracelsus, a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, has been tabbed as the “father of chemistry,” the “Luther of Medicine,” the “founder of modern toxicology”, and the “godfather of modern chemotherapy,” and was the guy who infused the critical importance of both “observation and received knowledge” into German technical learning. The font of that much-revered byproduct “German quality”.

The Germans have a lock on “ausbildung”, but, nevertheless, it’s basically exportable. BMW exported it to South Carolina where it’s doing just fine, albeit in its own strange American way.

China has yet to recognize and act upon this remedy for impending worker displacement even though it is sitting right there in country.

Apprenticeships more than just a job
Although, Matthias Risler and Zhao Zhiqunas point out in Apprenticeships in China that reports on apprenticeships in China are as old as the Tang and Song Dynasties (618 – 906 AD & 960 – 1279 AD respectively), such apprenticeships were for skilled crafts and not general industry. Even in the middle of the 1980s, “apprenticeship was not specifically considered, as the Government laid down its policy of “first train – then employ”, with the purpose of rationalizing the large economic and social conglomerates and redefining institutions, factories and other types of economic and social entities.”

In 1985, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party announced the “Decision on the reform of the education system” that introduced a “double certificate” system for trades or vocations, but it was light years off from the scope and rigor of “ausbildung”.

And the German apprentices are no slouches: with the worry and angst over a clear career path taken care of in advance, apprentices are free to dedicate themselves to their new professions. And they do; the results are remarkable for learner, sponsoring company, the products manufactured…as well as for the government.