This paper highlights the reasons why it is necessary to prepare university graduates for cooperation with China. Based on the current experience of the Department of Applied Economics, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, the possible ways and scope are suggested.

According to the statistics of the International Monetary Fund (2014), China was the world's largest economy when it comes to the size of real GDP in 2014. It is estimated (Businessinfo, 2014) that by 2020 China will have had a 17% share of the world trade. Czech trade with China has increased sharply in the last twenty years. China is an important business partner for the Czech Republic, with Czech import from China being sharply higher than export to China (Czech Statistical Office, 2015). The most important traded commodities are machinery, vehicles, hard goods and soft goods. There has also been an increase in Chinese investments in the Czech Republic and Czech investments in China. For example, an important Chinese private company, CEFC, is currently planning to invest CZK 20 billion in the Czech Republic. Czech investments in China are primarily aimed at the automotive industry and services (Businessinfo, 2014b). Another area with a big growth potential is tourism. In 2014, 200 000 Chinese tourists came to the Czech Republic (Czech Tourism, 2014).

The short summary of Czech trade with China presented above clearly implies that the labor market will experience an increase in the demand for workers who can speak Chinese and who are well-oriented in economics, the Chinese culture, business etiquette and so on. Even today, the demand for such workers is high. This fact is confirmed by surveys of Czech employment websites (e.g. jobs.cz, careerjet.cz…) and by confirmed easiness with which graduates of Applied Economics combined with Chinese Philology at the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University find jobs. Many of these students are already employed in the course of their studies.

Important factors to be considered when preparing students for cooperation with China

It is necessary to strengthen, extend and update the preparation of graduates who would possess the currently demanded qualifications and competencies in response to the development of Czech-Chinese relations and the social and technical development in general. Many factors must be taken into consideration when preparing students for cooperation with Chinese partners.