The purpose of this study is to determine the historical role of human resources played in China’s economic development. After Deng Xiao Ping opened China in 1978, China’s economy has grown drastically and it is still growing very fast compared to other advanced countries. According to the World Development Indicator, China’s economy grew at a rate of 6.11 percent last year, while Korean grew at 2.03 percent. Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) term was about 16,740 USD in 2019 in China compared to 43,430 USD in Korea. After World War II, two countries grew rapidly: China and Korea. Ironically, one is communist and the other is a democracy. Thus there can be no doubt that human capital is one of the most important factors behind their development. Many economists have attempted to explain why the economy grows. A long time ago, Solow developed his production model, which explains growth with labor, capital and another input. People substituted that input with technology, geography, urban structure and even institutions. Labor also has been expanded to human capital or skilled labor, etc. Glaeser et al argued for the importance of education using years of schooling, which represents the quality of human capital accumulation. Acemoglu et al said better institutions raise the quality of human capital and all together give rise to economic development. Empirically, they demonstrated the role of human capital in economic development. In addition, Glaeser and Lu published “Human-Capital Externalities in China” in 2018, which insisted higher city-level education led to higher wages in China.The education fever in China and Korea is already widely known. Even most “tiger moms” (as originally described by Amy Chua, a Chinese-American professor at Yale Law School) in the USA are Asian-American. Ex-president Barack Obama often mentioned Korean education fever as an exemplar and benchmark. Over the past several decades, the concept of human capital has shifted first from labor to skilled labor, then to human resources and then to highly educated human capital, etc. In the agricultural era, the total number population or number of males in the labor force is important, because it represented manpower. On the other hand, literate labor became critical in the industrial revolution era of the18th century because literacy allowed workers to easily share industrial knowhow. More recently, literacy in the use of smart devices is becoming much more important, as smartization has progressed. Further, the existence of high-level human capital such as Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, or Ma Yun, the founder of Alibaba, etc. is crucial to the competitiveness of nations. A high-end professional is more than just one person, because his or her contribution to society could be tremendous. In this aspect, this study is examine China’s human resources and derive some implications for Korea
