Strategic Needs of the Country and their Impact on the Emergence of New Specialties in the Xi Jinping Era

Over the last 5 - 10 years, changes in the economic sphere have occurred all over the world, so many countries have found themselves in a situation of necessary renewal and progress of the economic sphere in modern realities. More and more new technologies, such as AI, robotics, big data, etc., are forcing states around the world to implement digitalization of the economy. This process has also affected the People's Republic of China. To promote the new stage of economic development, it is necessary to promote the emergence of new professions, accordingly, the education system also needed to be reformed. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the strategic needs of the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the Xi Jinping period on the need to form a list of new professions and the implementation of new educational programs in the higher education system, and to assess their relevance to the needs of the labor market in the era of intensive development of the knowledge economy and technological innovation. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were performed: the main directions of development of economy, technology, innovation, education and human resources during Xi Jinping's reign were studied; the list of new specialties introduced in the PRC education system during Xi Jinping's reign was formed; the impact of the introduction of new specialties on the labor market needs and its structure was assessed; the degree of compliance of the new specialties with the requirements of the modern labor market was evaluated; the degree of compliance of the new specialties with the requirements of the modern labor market was assessed. The research on the introduction of new majors was mainly based on content analysis, which involves analyzing the content of official documents submitted by the Chinese government; statistical analysis, which is necessary to identify correlations and patterns between strategic needs and the emergence of new majors; and comparative analysis, which compares data on educational programs before and after Xi Jinping's rule to assess changes in specialties and labor market requirements. Only secondary sources were used in this paper. The sources we used included journal articles, Internet sites, articles and documents posted on an Internet portal. In the course of our research, we obtained data on the most demanded specialties for the country's economy, the effectiveness of the introduction of new specialties in the last 4 years, as well as the measures of universities to modernize curricula, and the impact of the government's strategy on their success. Keywords: CPC, education system, reform, market, strategy.