Collaboration: How Firms Facilitate the Transformation of Vocational Education in China

Building on the institutional space created by state withdrawal and school-level autonomy documented in Chap. 2, this chapter explains how acute shortages of skilled labor have prompted firms to become the driving force behind a new mode of vocational training. Challenging both the “quasi-labor agency” portrayal of Chinese VET and conventional skill formation theories that assume firm collaboration requires strong state coordination, the chapter shows that enterprises in technologically differentiated sectors are independently forging direct partnerships with vocational schools. Faced with the inefficiency of hiring generic workers, these firms move the development of firm-specific skills into the pre-employment phase through curriculum customization, technology transfer, and knowledge transfer. The result is a form of targeted training—whether for a brand, a value chain, or an entire product market—that embeds firm-specific standards into formal vocational education. Crucially, this model emerges not from top-down policy but from firm-level adaptation to fragmented labor markets, revealing how employers’ strategic human resource management has transformed the landscape of China’s skill formation system.