A key player in China’s feed and tilapia industries is plugging a skills gap in the sector through an alliance with one of the country’s oldest universities and freshwater aquaculture research centers.
The massive Tongwei Group, which breeds tilapia and supplies feed to the aquaculture sector, has signed an agreement with Huazhong University (also known by its English name of Central China University) in Wuhan to supply graduates to the company’s “Graduate Employment Platform.”
Located in the heart of China’s freshwater crab production region, Huazhong hosts China’s first department of aquaculture. Tongwei has picked up 15 staff from Huazhong to staff laboratories and aquaculture sites over the past two years, according to Mao Li Hong, the company’s head of HR for the central Chinese region. Mao signed the agreement with Liu Gang Le, the deputy secretary of the Communist Party branch of the university.
Leading Chinese employment companies and websites like Zhaopin are flush with advertisements for scientific, marketing, and finance jobs in the agriculture and aquaculture industries. However, as they modernize, those sectors continue to suffer from a talent crunch, as graduates have been slow to ditch a prejudice towards jobs in rural areas traditionally been associated with backwardness and poverty.
