General reading can act as a way of daily recreation. Professional reading, however, is easily regarded as a daunting task. In fact, it is also important to read professional books.

In Zhejiang Modern Vocational Education Research Center, which was jointly established by Jinhua Polytechnic and Zhejiang Research Institute of Education Science in May 2012, there is a group of experts and scholars who work as teachers as well as creators.

Two years ago, Wang Ya'nan, a doctor in vocational and technical education from East China Normal University, started his working in Zhejiang Modern Vocational Education Research Center after graduation.

In his opinion, vocational education is a kind of cross-border education, with one end linked to schools and the other to enterprises. Vocational education should be viewed not only from the perspective of schools but from the perspective of economic, social, and industrial development.

Last October, Wang published an article which analyses “American Factory”, a closely watched documentary, and concludes that one of the most important reason why the manufacturing industry in America declines is the broken generation of workers. Due to the "hollowing out" that lasted for decades, most workers in American manufacturing factories are middle-aged and elderly. Young people are more willing to work in Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

When Wang Ya’nan studied for his doctorate, he worked on the subject of comparative education, which gave him insight into national conditions and world trends. He realized that professional reading is necessary for doing research, but vocational education research does not equal to theoretical research. Accumulation of reading should be utilized all the time to explain the endlessly emerging phenomena in the field of vocational education.

"For the development of vocational education in China, the most urgent thing is to change the status of techniques within the enterprises. We should promote the competitiveness of the enterprise by improving workers' skills so that we can avoid making the same mistakes as some developed countries,” Wang said.

Huang Daren, former President of Sun Yat-sen University, said: "When I was the President of Sun Yat-sen University, I once said in the newspaper that we would build a number of schools in vocational education with the same status and power as Tsinghua and Peking universities in general education. During my tenure, I felt vague that higher vocational education is one type of higher education, which is different from general education. If vocational education is well developed, it can provide experience for the reform of higher education and promote the development of the whole field of higher education.

In 2019, the State Council issued the "Implementation Plan for The National Vocational Education Reform", which explicitly states that vocational education and general education are two different types of education and have the same status.

"Every country with advanced vocational education is also the one with strong comprehensive competitiveness," said Wang Zhenhong, the party secretary of Jihua Polytechnic.

What kind of talents should vocational education cultivate? The debate on this point has been accompanied by the reform of vocational education. It has been called for a long time to change the status of vocational education from education of levels to education of types.

"The external performance of the change is the rise of the level of vocational education, but the fundamental orientation is the increasing recognition of technical talent. To make technical talents come into play, we need to build a comprehensive system with objective evaluation standards, fair treatment, and good benefits. Therefore, the construction of technical society is prior to the improvement of the level of vocational education," said Dai Xinping, the dean of the college of mechanical and electrical engineering, Jihua Polytechnic.

Only when the overall social status of technical talents reaches the same level as that of scientists and engineers, or at least the gap between them is not too large, can the positioning of vocational education be supported, and vocational education can be said as a different type of education with the same status as general education.

(Compiled by Xu Yuhong, translated by Zou Guan'er)