The second Shanghai Skills Competition, the city's largest comprehensive contest focusing on professional skills, kicked off on March 23 in Qingpu district, hailing the city's exquisite skills and helping promote the cultivation of skilled talents.

Hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the Qingpu district people's government, the competition features 101 events. Among them, 59 events are included in the WorldSkills Competition, and 40 events are selected for the national skills competition.

These competition events were set up in line with the city's development strategies and plans for sectors such as key industries, emerging skills and trends, the development of a modernized industrial system, and the growth of the digital economy. Nearly 1,000 contestants from companies, associations, and schools across the city are demonstrating their skills in the competition.

Winners of the competition will have the chance to represent Shanghai to compete in the national skills competition scheduled in September in Zhengzhou, Henan province, and the opportunity to further strive to represent China in the 48th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai next year, according to the organizer.

In addition to the competition, skills demonstration sessions are also set up in Qingpu district, enabling more youth visitors to learn about and experience professional skills up close. They include advanced manufacturing technology demonstrations such as the assembly and adjustment on spacecraft hinge mechanism, virtual welding training, artificial intelligence technology demonstrations such as humanoid robots and bionic robot dogs, as well as skill demonstrations of life services such as pastry, baking and cooking.

Li Min, 23, is one of the 11 competitors in the restaurant service event and works at the China Eastern Airlines. She was selected by her company and went through a two-month training to present a satisfying performance. She and her instructor shared with China Daily that although restaurant service seems ordinary, dealing with the details, such as folding a perfect napkin and making an eye-catching table design, could be extremely difficult and require tons of practice and innovative ideas.

The Shanghai Information Technology College, a key secondary vocational school in China, has sent a team of two students under 18 to compete in the autonomous mobile robotics event. Included in the WorldSkills Competition, the event focuses on designing, building and maintaining robots to solve problems in industries. The team of two Chinese competitors managed to claim the gold medal in this category at WorldSkills Lyon 2024.

"I think vocational education is necessary, as it offers diverse options and possibilities for students with various talents and helps such students find the career path best suitable for them. And such competitions, as I have seen, gave the competitors much confidence and improvement. The participants usually tend to harvest more knowledge, become more skilled and better at communication and teamwork after the competition," said Ge Rui, dean of the college.

The industry 4.0 event is also spotlighted at the competition. Last year at the WorldSkills Lyon 2024, Chinese participants Lu Junwei and Xie Huiyuan winning in this category, earned the prestigious Albert Vidal Award, recognizing competitors with the highest overall points across all skill competitions.

"The industry 4.0 skill contest has seen extensive participation, with competitors coming from universities, colleges and schools on various levels across the nation," said Yuan Hairong, chief expert of Team China in the event at the WorldSkills Lyon 2024 and head of the technical department at Siemens Factory Automation Engineering Ltd.

Yuan pointed out that the event requires high-standard skills both in operation technologies and information technologies, and it was a triumph for Chinese competitors to outperform Western counterparts and win the award last year.

"We are aiming to cultivate talents with better and wider understanding of the technologies and expecting to boost the development of intelligent manufacturing in China. Also, eyeing on the WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai next year, we are looking to enhancing international and friendly exchanges with Western teams and learning more about the latest industrial updates," he added.