Action taken to solve shortage of professionals

More than 6,000 students from colleges in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, are set to graduate in 2019 and nearly 400 international job-hunters from over 80 countries participated in a job fair in the city last month to seek opportunities in the field of cross-border e-commerce.

Launched by the Hangzhou Cross-Border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Area's administrative office, the fair has been held for three consecutive years, and is part of the area's push to build up a pool of highly trained employees to meet the ever-increasing market demand.

Skilled and qualified professionals provide the core competitiveness in the development of cross-border e-commerce, and it is an urgent problem that needs to be solved amid the rapid development of Hangzhou's digital economy, said Wu Changhong, director of the publicity department of the pilot area.

Currently, the cross-border e-commerce industry in China needs up to 4.5 million people, and 80 percent of the 13,000 e-commerce companies in Hangzhou have a staffing shortage, he said.

"For a company, workers should know about the operational rules of different cross-border e-commerce platforms and the local cultures and economic situations when selling products to overseas markets," Wu added.

Home to e-commerce and internet giants such as Alibaba and NetEase, Hangzhou has become a crucial base for the digital industry with eye-catching achievements in this field in recent years.

Official data shows that the value of Hangzhou's digital economy in the past three years accounted for over 25 percent of its GDP.

Over the past three years, Hangzhou has witnessed a surge in the number of digital economy-related professionals as it has rapidly grown into one of the country's digital industry hubs, next only to Shanghai and Shenzhen.

That's according to a report on the digital transformation of China's economy released last year by the center for internet development and governance at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and networking website LinkedIn.

Chen Yibo, director of the Tsinghua center, said that digital professionals should not only acquire information and communications technology skills but also other complementary knowledge such as in-depth analysis and research, product development and strategy management.

In October, research-oriented private university Westlake Institute for Advanced Study was founded in Hangzhou, injecting impetus into the city's development of its digital economy.

The university will focus on cutting-edge science and research with aspirations to become one of the world's top research institutes.

The university has recruited 68 independent laboratory directors and doctoral supervisors via global recruitment and has enrolled a total of 139 doctoral candidates.

With the continuous boom in the digital economy, Hangzhou also plans to bring in more than 50 leading professionals in the field, set up over 40 innovation teams and train more than 10,000 digital personnel by 2022.