Vocational guidance and career planning in China

Abstract

2Curriculum and Teaching Materials, Research institute, Beijing, China Although China has a history of more than 4000 years, compared to other advance countries, it is still young in terms of economic development and maximal use of natural resources. Through its long history, traditions have become well stabilized, and they have only recently begun to respond to the impact of technological advancement and industrial expansion. Understandably, these conditions affect the ways that occupational selection and job placement have occurred over the years. In order to gain a useful perspective on vocational guidance and career planning, how they are functioning today, and how they are likely to progress over the next two or three decades, it will help to look at the environmental elements which have shaped them in the past, as well as the forces which are now making change inevitable.