Bridging Tradition and Modernisation in China’s TVET Reform: A CHAT-Informed Policy Analysis

Abstract The modernisation of China’s vocational education system presents both a strategic imperative and a cultural-educational challenge. As policy shifts increasingly emphasise alignment with Industry 4.0 marked by automation, digitisation, and adaptive labour markets, there is growing pressure on educators to cultivate learner dispositions such as creativity, critical enquiry, collaboration, and agency. This challenge is common to vocational education systems globally; there is a common friction between traditional education philosophies and practices and the emergent imperatives of Industry 4.0. In China, there have been achievements in integrating diverse modern education practices, yet the system’s challenge to modernise “at scale” remains. As with global systems, friction emerges when overlaid onto systems traditionally shaped (to meet with needs of Industry 3.0 and earlier), which continue to structure pedagogical relationships and practices. This article investigates that friction through a dual-method approach: a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) analysis of system-level contradictions, and a document analysis of high-level Chinese vocational education policy texts. CHAT methods are useful as they are designed to identify key tensions between policy aims and practice, which in the vocational education context in China and globally, centre on innovation, accountability, and the evolving role of the teacher. Drawing on a 21C dispositional framework, the study reimagines Confucian dispositions as culturally situated starting points for developing modern learner competencies at scale. This reframing highlights that the modernisation policy agenda does not advocate for the abandonment of tradition but does suggest a need for a purposeful reinterpretation that aligns with the unprecedented change created by Industry 4.0. Findings reveal that educators are often caught in systemic double binds, expected to enact inquiry-driven teaching while being evaluated through compliance frameworks. Yet within this tension, new “third spaces” are emerging practice sites where teachers reinterpret Confucian values in ways that serve both cultural continuity and future-readiness. The article argues that such reinterpretation is key to developing a vocational education system that is both locally grounded and globally responsive.