Many Chinese are calling for preschool teachers to be more highly qualified following the recent exposure of incidents of abuse at kindergartens, China Youth Daily reported.

China Youth Daily’s official WeChat account said that not only does the country lack preschool teachers but also many of them are not qualified.

In 2016, the ratio of staff to students in full-time kindergartens was about one to 12, far below the standard of one to five released by the Ministry of Education in 2013, according to the report.

It added that by the year of 2021, China will have an additional 15 million preschoolers, and the shortage of preschool teachers and childcare workers will surpass 3 million.

The number of preschool education graduates is too small to fill the shortage. Additionally, many of those graduates will not become teachers, instead opting for other jobs due to the industry’s low salaries and high pressure.

Most of China’s kindergartens are currently private, and they lag far behind from public facilities in terms of financial support and other resources.

As a result, these kindergartens will often hire staff who are not qualified to be a preschool teacher at all.

In 2016, there were 2.5 million preschool teachers in China, among whom 56.37 percent held an associate degree, and 22.4 percent had only a high school diploma or below, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Education.

According to a kindergarten principal from Jinan, Shandong Province, once these unqualified teachers “find that the children are not as cute and naive as they had imagined, lacking better training they will simply treat them incorrectly.”

It is much harder to become a preschool teacher in other countries than it is in China.

In Canada, only graduates with a major in preschool education can apply, and they must pass a dozen required courses. Similarly, in the United States and France, a preschool teacher requires a bachelor’s degree, years of special training and teaching certificate.

An explosion on Sunday morning in east China’s Ningbo city has caused two deaths and two serious injuries, while a number of injured people are in hospital, the local authorities said on Weibo.

A rescuer carries a victim out of the scene, where an explosion occurred, in Jiangbei District of Ningbo City in east China’s Zhejiang Province on Nov 26, 2017. [Photo: zjol.com.cn]

The accident happened at around 9 a.m. in Jiangbei District of Ningbo City, causing some buildings to collapse.

An investigation into the explosion is ongoing.

An explosion on Sunday morning in a factory in East China’s Zhejiang province has caused casualties, but exact numbers were not immediately known, according to local authorities and witnesses.

The accident happened at around 9 am in the plant in Jiangbei district of Ningbo city, causing some buildings to collapse, the city’s fire department said.

China has started the third phase of 5G technology research and development tests, ahead of schedule, as the country accelerates steps to gain a lead in the race toward commercializing the next-generation communication technology.

The move came as China Mobile Communications Corp and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd showcased the world’s smallest 5G testing terminal on Friday, indicating that the country will pioneer the world in 5G research and development.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said the third phase of technical tests aims to get pre-commercial 5G products ready when the first version of 5G standards comes out in June next year.

The industry regulator has called for more efforts to upgrade testing environments and a bigger push to experiment with more 5G-enabled applications, with added focus on the integration of chips, systems and other instruments.

Previously, officials said the third phase tests would not start until next year. The country had concluded the second phase of tests earlier this year, with contributions from both domestic and foreign companies such as Huawei, ZTE and Ericsson.

On Friday, China Mobile and Huawei also showcased the world’s smallest 5G testing device at the former’s global partners conference in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

The device, which is roughly the size of Amazon.com Inc’s smart speaker, can convert high-speed 5G signals into Wi-Fi signals, helping users access wireless broadband services. It can be used to test 5G pre-commercial networking and support other trials, Huawei said in a statement.

In comparison, most of the testing machines are very heavy and some even need to be carried by a trolley.

These moves are part of China’s broad push to commercialize 5G services in 2020.

China Mobile said it would deploy 10,000 5G base stations by 2020.

Huang Haifeng, an expert at the leading telecom industry website cww.net, said China has evolved from a follower into a leader in the global telecom sector.

“The smallest 5G testing machine shows that China Mobile and Huawei have poured tons of resources into research and development, because 5G-enabled devices are far better than 4G devices in many aspects and it is hard to shrink the devices into a small size,” Huang said.

A two-day conference opened in Chongqing on Nov. 25 to draw out various views on how to promote China’s discourse power internationally through enhanced translation of government documents.

“It is more necessary than ever for China to promote international communications, to tell its stories to the world and to build its own political discourse system with Chinese characteristics,” said Li Keyong, president of Sichuan International Studies University, during the third conference of its type.

It attracted more than 120 academics from across the nation to discuss how to create better translations of Chinese government documents.

“The translation of documents and the way of publicity have become two key aspects in building China’s discourse system in the international community,” Li added.

In his speech, Huang Youyi, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and executive vice president of the Translators Association of China, said that, in the new phase of development, China was confronted by challenges in regard to translation of Chinese official documents.

“It is essential that China should interpret Chinese political philosophy, path and blueprint by itself,” Huang said. “the translation of Chinese government documents should target readers. On the one hand, the translation should focus on its original content; on the other hand, it should be readable.”

Huang noted that China should promote further study of its political discourse system so as to enhance discourse power in the international community.

According to Ming Guohui, party secretary of Sichuan International Studies University, in 2016, it established an Institute for international discourse studies, aiming at studying on the China’s political discourse system and cultivating students in a new academic discipline.

Li Keyong, president of Sichuan International Studies University, speaking at the conference. [Photo by Gao Zhan / China.org.cn]