Choice for China: What Role for Vocational Education in Green Growth?

• Author: Carlo Jaeger
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-124X.2014.12084.x
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Date: 01 September 2014

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China & World Economy / 55–75, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2014

©2014 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Choice for China: What Role for Vocational

Education in Green Growth?

Carlo Jaeger*

Abstract

Green growth cannot succeed without significant changes in the education system and the

closely related social division of labor. This paper combines historical evidence and a

game-theoretic analysis to study the relation between vocational education and green growth.

It is found that a low-vocation and a high-vocation equilibrium can be distinguished in the

interplay between education and labor markets, and that a high-vocation equilibrium is

better suited for green growth. At the present stage of development, there are tendencies in

both directions in China. Therefore, China has the possibility to successfully implement a

green growth strategy by developing a strong vocational education with Chinese

characteristics.

Key words: China, green growth, vocational education

JEL codes: I21, O43, Q56

I. Introduction

At the China Development Forum 2014 in Beijing, Vice Minister of Education Lu Xin

explained that approximately half of all Chinese undergraduate colleges and universities,

approximately half of 1200 institutions, will transition to modern forms of vocational

education (Sun, 2014). On the face of it, this may seem unrelated to the strategic re-

orientation expressed in the groundbreaking report on seizing the opportunity of green

development in China (World Bank and DRC, 2012). This superficial view is reinforced by

the fact that the literature on green growth has all but ignored the role of vocational

education. In fact, strengthening vocational education has the potential to transform the

*Carlo Jaeger, Professor, Beijing Normal University, Beijing. Email: carlo.jaeger@globalclimateforum.org.

56 Carlo Jaeger / 55–75, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2014

©2014 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Chinese education system from the perspective of green growth.1

There are several relevant insights to be found in the small but valuable literature on

green growth and education, as well as in the comparative literature on vocational education

in different countries. However, to use these insights in view of the possibility of green

growth requires a theoretical effort. The image of an economy as driven by marginal changes

in the neighborhood of a given equilibrium must be embedded in a more comprehensive

understanding of the interaction between economic and social dynamics. One needs to

take into account situations where the future of an economy is undetermined, where different

trajectories are possible. A chosen trajectory may look like the obvious consequence of the

initial circumstances, but this unduly neglects equally viable, and perhaps even more

desirable roads not taken. Such is the situation of China in defining the role of vocational

education for a green growth path: there are historical options that are easily overlooked

but that matter a great deal for green growth.

In the present paper, I first discuss the role of education in the green growth literature

in Section II. The historical development of vocational education in the industrial revolution

is described in Section III. Section IV establishes an inframarginal analysis in game-theoretical

terms to identify two possible equilibria. Finally, an important policy implication is provided

in Section V. China is faced with a far-reaching choice between two different possibilities of

handling vocational education in a perspective of green growth.

II. Education in the Green Growth Literature

Like the ideas of sustainable development, of millennium goals or of nuclear disarmament,

the idea of green growth is not an offspring of scientific research, but of political debates.

It was formally adopted by the OECD during its 2009 Ministerial Council Meeting, chaired

by the Prime Minister of Korea. Korea had already successfully proposed a green growth

strategy at a ministerial conference of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission

for Asia and the Pacific in 2005. Korean civil servants, in turn, had been inspired by earlier

conversations at the World Economic Forum in 2001 and by a related article in the business

press (The Economist, 2001; Park, 2013).

1For an excellent introduction to the development of vocational education in China, see Wang and Jiang

(2013); Kuczera and Simon (2010) give an overview from an OECD perspective; Schmidtke and Chen

(2012), Yi et al. (2013) and Yu (2013) provide helpful insight into the related literature.