With tremendous efforts made by the Ministry of Labor (MOL), the WorldSkills Asia (WSA) officially announced Taiwan as the host for the WorldSkills Asia Competition (WSAC) 2025 on June 1st, 2022. After 30 years, the WSAC 2025 will be the second time an international skills competition hosted in Taiwan since 1993. It proves that our success in long-term vocational trainings has once again been recognized by countries in Asia.
The Minister of Labor, Hsu Ming-Chun, stated that Taiwan has placed great importance to international exchange and collaboration of skills. Also, Taiwan has set up the 2nd WorldSkills Capacity Building Centre in the world with an aim to provide a platform for skills exchange by, for example, holding skills workshops and supporting trainings on experts and competitors worldwide. Taiwan would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all WSA members for honoring us to host the WSAC 2025. Moreover, the MOL is committed to bringing the government, corporations, and schools together and unifying their collaborative strength to make concrete contributions to regional skills development, and further generate co-prosperity and mutual benefits in skills development for Asian countries.
WSA, founded by the United Arab Emirates in 2018, is a regional organization under the WorldSkills International. With Taiwan being one of the founding members, WSA has now encompassed 25 members. In the WSAC 2018 Abu Dhabi, Taiwan won 5 gold, 5 silver and 3 bronze medals, an impressive performance with 81% out of all Competitors winning a medal. The next WSAC Kuala Lumpur has been postponed to 2023 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The MOL will have a selection process to decide National Champions to represent Taiwan to compete in the WSAC Kuala Lumpur.
The MOL holds the National Skills Competition annually to select outstanding young talents of skills who then undergo intensive trainings and represent Taiwan in the WorldSkills Competition, for our skills practices to meet international standards. Furthermore, to encourage more young people to engage in skills learning, the MOL not only has continually arranged National Champions to promote intensive learning of skills in schools but also has organized skills competitions for the youth. This is to strike the importance of skills development into the citizens of Taiwan and cultivate more skills-related professionals for the country.