BEIJING: The Technical and Vocational Education & Training (TVET) Symposium, convened by the Embassy of Pakistan in Beijing on April 22, stands as a landmark initiative to deepen result-oriented pragmatic cooperation between China and Pakistan. Centered on high-potential sectors—including home appliances, electrical equipment, and battery and power storage manufacturing—the event, themed “Building Partnerships for Skills Development and Academia–Industry Collaboration”, transcends conventional diplomatic dialogue. Against the backdrop of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), it serves as a strategic catalyst for industrial advancement and sustained economic vitality.
This was stated by Prof Cheng Xizhong, Senior Research Fellow at the Charhar Institute, a non-governmental Chinese think-tank on diplomacy and international studies based in Beijing.
Building on the remarkable success of the 2025 Agricultural TVET Forum, this symposium acts as a critical preparatory platform for the upcoming B2B Investment Conference, which will focus on the aforementioned sectors and is scheduled to be held in Lahore on May 9-10, 2026.
The event brought together senior officials from China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 41 representatives from leading Chinese TVET institutions and enterprises, as well as senior Pakistani government officials and business delegates participating online. This convergence has forged a fully integrated channel for investment matching and skills-oriented collaboration, he said in a statement.
For Pakistan, this cooperation directly addresses a longstanding bottleneck in its industrial growth. The country boasts a $5.6 billion home appliances market and witnessed a 75% surge in electrical equipment imports, reaching nearly $6 billion last year. However, a shortage of skilled technical personnel has left Pakistan heavily reliant on overseas products. As highlighted by Pakistani Ambassador to China Khalil Hashmi, TVET is the bedrock of industrial development and economic resilience, and a skilled workforce is indispensable to unlocking the full potential of foreign investment. Pakistani officials further outlined ambitious plans: upgrading 250 TVET centers and rolling out a 60,000-person paid internship program, while seeking closer ties with Chinese partners to establish elite training bases and industry-driven apprenticeship schemes, he added.
Prof Cheng said that this targeted TVET collaboration also injects new momentum into the Livelihood Corridor of CPEC 2.0 and the URAAN Pakistan framework, facilitating the transfer of China’s advanced vocational education expertise and industrial technologies. By translating strategic consensus into tangible actions, this initiative not only empowers Pakistan’s industrial upgrading, reduces its import dependency, and boosts youth employment, but also unlocks vast collaborative opportunities for Chinese educational institutions and enterprises.
Rooted in the all-weather China-Pakistan friendship and the principle of win-win cooperation, this symposium has laid a solid foundation for deeper industrial and talent synergy. It paves the way for the sustained, high-quality development of bilateral economic and trade relations under the CPEC framework, reinforcing the two countries’ commitment to mutual growth and shared prosperity, he added. –Agencies
