At 18, Hu Gengjun secured China's first-ever Gold Medal in Mobile Robotics at WorldSkills.A few years later, he made an unexpected decision to join the military.
Hu's interest in technology began long before WorldSkills. After enrolling in a vocational college in 2016, he taught himself programming by reading English materials using translation software. He spent more than 12 hours a day training, building hardware during the day and writing code late into the night.
At the 45th WorldSkills Competition in Kazan in 2019, Hu and his teammate overcame unexpected setbacks to win gold, ending another country's five-competition winning streak in the event.
Instead of following a conventional career path, Hu chose military service in 2022. There, he applied the programming and systems integration skills he had developed through WorldSkills to military technical innovation, contributing to projects that involved robotic equipment designed for hazardous environments.
"A score of 99 still means it's not good enough," Hu said. "That is what skills taught us." For Hu, skills are more than competition results. They are tools to solve problems wherever they are needed.
Reporter: Xie Maishi
Source: Guangdong Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security
