China will become the world's largest source of highly educated workers by 2030, and experts say Beijing should improve the quality of higher education to fulfill the needs of the international labor market.

By 2030, China will account for 30 percent of the world's highly educated workers, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute.

The United States, by comparison, will only account for 5 percent of highly educated workers.

According to the study, China is also churning out far more graduates majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics than the rest of the world, contributing to some of the world's fastest-growing sectors.

In 2008, 42 percent of China's college and university students graduated with those majors, compared to just 14 percent in the US, the study showed.

Experts said China's transformation from a country of cheap low-skilled laborers to a supplier of highly educated workers is the result of the importance the Chinese government attaches to education.

But they added that difficulties lie ahead for highly educated Chinese to meet the demands of the international labor market.

"Investments in education that China made much earlier are now paying off," said Anu Madgavkar, a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute.

"China invested in opening a lot of schools and they ramped up college enrolment."

China has paid increasingly more attention to higher education and never stopped reforming the sector. Nobody can deny the progress China made to improve the quantity and quality of higher education, said Yi Dinghong, a professor from the School of Labor and Human Resources at Renmin University of China.

Government spending on education will account for 4 percent of the country's GDP in 2012, an increase of 14.29 percent over 2011, Premier Wen Jiabao said in March when delivering the government report at the opening ceremony of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

During the mid-1980s, China's spending on education was lower than 3 percent of GDP. In the late 1980s, the State Education Commission suggested that the figure should be increased to 4 percent by the mid-1990s or 2000.

However, before 2011 the percentage had been less than 3.5 percent.

China has a large population, so a small increase in education spending can result in a large increase in the number of highly educated workers, Yi said.

Yi said he is worried that China won't be able to produce enough highly educated workers to meet the demand of the international labor market.

"The number alone, which is easier to get in a study, can not guarantee that highly educated Chinese graduates are qualified for the international labor market," he added.

Compared with their counterparts in developed countries such as the US and Japan, highly educated Chinese graduates lack global awareness, hands-on capability and innovation, said the professor.

Chinese college and university graduates also face the problem of interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds on an international team, said Luo Zhihai, a Chinese doctoral student at the Exeter Camborne School of Mines in the United Kingdom.

In China, there are fewer opportunities for a university student to participate in an international research program, Luo said, adding that Chinese graduates with poor English-language skills may have difficulty communicating with graduates from developed countries.

However, Chinese graduates have large advantages in the domestic labor market, because they are more familiar with Chinese society, said Sophie Shang, an associate director in Beijing from the international headhunter Robert Walters.

Although the quality of China's high education is not as good as in developed countries, Chinese graduates are efficient and know more about Chinese business practices, Shang said.

To meet the qualifications needed in the international labor market, analysts said China should deepen education reform to continuously offer innovative workers.

"Only increasing investment in the education sector alone cannot solve the problem," Yi said.

Contact the writer at zhouwa@chinadaily.com.cn