A shortage of professional tasters in the wine brewing industry will soon be eased as China has listed wine taster as a new profession in the country's tenth batch of new professions.

China has more than 15,600 wine companies, yet more than 80 percent of them complain of a shortage of wine tasters.

Liu Kang, employment training center director of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS), said the establishment of the new profession would help standardize the training market and accelerate the growth of the industry.

Wine taster is among ten new professions approved by the MLSS. The other nine are color design consultant, digital music composer, labor relations coordinator, lifeguard, safety assessment engineer, dairy product taster, kitchen manager, nuts cook and glass examiner.

All these ten new professions come from tertiary industry, Liu said, which "reflected mushroom growth of new professions in service sectors."

Industries such as color design, a mature industry in developed countries, is relatively new to Chinese customers. Japan has more than 400,000 color design consultants, but China has only 300,000 at the moment.

Color design professionals would help companies improve their aesthetics, and increase added-value of their products as well as competitiveness, Liu said.

Digital music composing is another emerging industry. Although there are a lot of people working in the business, disorder in the training market have blocked the industry from expanding on the right track.

Liu held that the establishment of the profession would push forward the country's music industry.

Related governmental organs are working on national standards of training and examination for the new professions.

According to the latest statistics, the added-value of the service industry accounted for more than 40 percent of the gross domestic product. In 2006, there were 246 million people working in the service sectors, 48 million people more than in 2000.

The country issued the first batch of new professions in Aug. 2004. To date, 106 professions have been established since then.

(Xinhua News Agency December 9, 2007)