China Encounters Big Data Talent Shortage Despite Leading Data Professional Count

China possesses a huge number of data professionals ranging up to 59.5 percent in the whole world. Due to initiatives to promote the internet and big data application, the country has assembled rich data resources in the past few years.

A study conducted by the Global Big Data Development and Analysis 2019 compares the governmental policy, programs, information sharing, innovation abilities and business development related to big data of various significant cities.

With 22.4 percent of the world’s data professional, the US stands at the second place after China.

Big data has already ventured into governmental affairs, retail, transportation, medicine, education, public governance, and other fields extensively in China.

China witnessed a huge jump from 3.4 percent in 2015 to 22.8 percent in 2018 in terms of papers related to big data and their citation surpassed that of the US when rose from 1.8 percent in 2015 to 20.8 percent in 2018.

Despite all the leading, China is experiencing a shortage of big data talent. Out of the entire employee population, 0.23 percent of them are accounted for big data. While in the US, South Korea, Finland, and Israel, the big data professional count is around 0.41 percent, 0.43 percent, 0.84 percent, and 1.12 percent, respectively.

The Global Big Data Development and Analysis 2019 report also depict that the degree of open data at a national government level is likely to be low if the per capita GDP of the company is lower. Counting as an exception, although India’s per capita income is low yet the efforts put in by the government in open data operation is leading the country’s global position, giving rise to interesting innovative applications.

In order to avoid this talent crunch, China needs to sustain the economic ascent of its rich history and produce more and more suitable data graduates for the industry. Additionally, reforms in the educational system would prove extremely beneficial. It will help fill the skilled labor gap of China.