Chinese society is currently undergoing a development phase in which acquired knowledge quickly becomes obsolete and acquired skills quickly become worthless in many areas. Furthermore, the lack of practical orientation in school and university education generally means that graduating students embark on a fourth phase of training after university during which they are prepared within a company for the work they will actually be required to perform.

The "reform and opening up policy" that has been pursued for the past thirty-five years, with its far-reaching and at times downright revolutionary social, economic and cultural changes, has already required the Chinese public to undertake learning processes that go well beyond anything that can be taught in school or in the family. The kind of changes to work processes, social relationships, ethical norms, life and career expectations and consumer behaviour which took place in Europe over the course of several generations—for example as a result of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society and subsequently from an industrial to a digital post-industrial society—happened in China in the space of a single generation, which placed enormous demands on it in terms of learning. This necessity to adapt in an extremely short period of time to radically changed living and working conditions explains the amazing flexibility and willingness of many Chinese to acquire new knowledge and skills and react to new requirements. Young Chinese respond with a greater willingness to learn and with more openness than their European contemporaries, especially when it comes to digital innovations and the development of communication technologies.

China's evolutionary phase as the "workshop of the world", based on unskilled or only semi-skilled labor, is coming to an end. Confronted with growing unemployment among the army of millions of "peasant workers", as well as among university graduates, the Chinese education system will have to create far more opportunities for post-school continuing education and further training than currently exist. There is no sign of any such concept at present, and although lifelong learning is practiced, it is virtually never the subject of public or academic discourse.

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