Redefining Adult Education in an Emerging Economy: The Example of Shenzhen, China

摘要

At a time of economic transition, when jobs are continually disappearing and emerging, adult education and training in the workplace have developed very rapidly to meet the needs of skills development. This paper looks at how firms and their employees deal with workplace changes in the Shenzhen conurbation, site of China's earliest experiment in introducing a market economy. The author finds that adult education and on-the-job training are taking on new roles in aiding development. He argues that, while learning to reorganise production, firms have taken charge of meeting the demand for human capital in a changing workplace. At the same time, individual employees are becoming conscientious learners and accessing adult education as a means of personal development in their work lives.