At this year’s meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), President Xi Jinping said China will launch 10 additional Luban Workshops in the organisation’s member countries over the next five years, providing training slots for 10,000 individuals.
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Named after the ancient architect and inventor Lu Ban, the project is somewhat low profile compared to others in Beijing’s infrastructure-heavy Belt and Road Initiative.
But the vocational education programme has quietly expanded across Europe, Asia and Africa, opening over 30 workshops and training over 30,000 individuals by late 2024, according to China’s Ministry of Education.
Here, we provide more clarity on what the workshop is, what it does and the extent of its global reach.
What is the Luban Workshop?
The workshop, a vocational education programme launched by China in 2016, was created to shore up the skills and know-how of local labour forces through partnerships with schools in host countries.
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