The Opening Ceremony of the Kick-off Stage was held hybrid/virtual in Xiamen. Mr. FANG Jun, Deputy Director General of the Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, Ministry of Education of China, Mr. LIU Xinchang, Deputy Director General of Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China, and Mr. LIAO Huasheng, Vice Mayor of Xiamen Municipal People’s Government attended and addressed. Over 600 guests, experts, referees and competitors from BRICS participating and about 2.1 million spectators watched the opening ceremony online.

Nearly 200 teams from BRICS competed in 3 skills including Web Application Development, Machine Learning and Big Data, and Rail Vehicle Technology at the Kick-off Stage. Before the competition, BRICS’ experts, referees and coaches from TVET institutions jointly discussed the rules and standards of the competition, as well as the content and the online operational approaches to unify criteria, with the purpose of ensuring the competition goes with a swing. Based on the discussion, relevant training courses and an online training camp were shaped to guide the competitors to acknowledge to the procedures of the competition. Experts from BRICS made up the referee committee.

With the hybrid format of competing, the competition effectively switches the competition scene via the modern information technology, innovatively breaks the spacial and temporal barrier of international competition, providing an alternative for people-to-people cooperation and exchanges in pandemic and a new platform for the interaction between TVET institutions and companies in BRICS countries. Meanwhile, with the unification of criteria, a solid foundation can be formed for the unified BRICS skills certification system in the future.

（Source: Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China）