How to become a Tobacco Leaf Grader
Official Chinese title (2022 occupational classification): 烟叶评级员
Judges the quality of tobacco leaf by sight, touch and other senses and analysis, and sets purchase and sale grades.
Main tasks
- Judging ripeness, leaf structure, colour depth, oil content and other grade factors, sorting groups and grades and reviewing and making grade samples for different uses
- Grading tobacco at purchase, stocking and receiving against physical samples
- Analysing the features and differences of leaf sensory traits and identifying tobacco type, origin and variety
- Analysing the traits of leaf and strips and developing, checking and reviewing sensory reference and character samples
- Choosing leaf for threshing and redrying and grading and sorting it
- Judging the quality of purchased leaf and its causes and suggesting improvements to growing, harvesting and curing
- Analysing quality changes in stored leaf and strips and advising on storage and care
- Judging the quality of finished strips and its causes and suggesting improvements to sorting, blending and threshing and redrying
Ways in
- Vocational majors: Higher vocational college (高职专科) major: Tobacco Cultivation and Processing Technology (410109). Vocational major 410109 Tobacco Cultivation and Processing Technology (烟草栽培与加工技术), 3 years. The Ministry of Education's 2022 major profiles list this occupation among those the major prepares students for (职业面向).; Secondary vocational school (中职) major: Tobacco Cultivation and Processing (610109). Vocational major 610109 Tobacco Cultivation and Processing (烟草栽培与加工), 3 years. The Ministry of Education's 2022 major profiles list this occupation among those the major prepares students for (职业面向).
AI and this job
- Generative AI can do relatively little of this work, by the ILO's global estimate.
Who does this work
- The census group Tobacco Products Processing Workers holds 0.02% of everyone employed in China; 39.8% of its workers are women (2020 Census).
- 24% are under 35, 62.1% are 35 to 54 and 13.9% are 55 or older. The middle age band is 45 to 49.
- Census figures for the whole mid group (2020 long-form sample), not for this job alone.
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Questions people ask
How do I become a Tobacco Leaf Grader?
Ways in include: Higher vocational college (高职专科) major: Tobacco Cultivation and Processing Technology (410109); Secondary vocational school (中职) major: Tobacco Cultivation and Processing (610109).
Will AI change the work of a Tobacco Leaf Grader?
Generative AI can do relatively little of this work, by the ILO's global estimate.
Sources
- National Bureau of Statistics of China: China Population Census Yearbook 2020, long-form tables 4-6 and 4-7 (employed by occupation mid group, sex, age) (2020 Census long form (10% sample)), retrieved 4 October 2026
- International Labour Organization, Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure (ILO Working Paper 140, Gmyrek et al.) (ILO Working Paper 140, May 2025, Annex Table A1), CC BY 4.0, retrieved 4 October 2026
Sources: Occupational Classification of the People's Republic of China (2022 edition, public consultation draft), Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, State Administration for Market Regulation and National Bureau of Statistics; Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 2025 enterprise pay survey information; Guangzhou Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, 2025 labour market wage prices; National Bureau of Statistics of China (www.stats.gov.cn), 2020 Population Census yearbook; Ministry of Education, vocational education major profiles (2022 revision) and undergraduate major catalogue (2025); Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, national vocational qualifications catalogue (2021); O*NET interest scores (CC BY 4.0); ILO global generative AI exposure index (CC BY 4.0). Figures processed by Peernovo. English text, translations and the matching of occupations to ISCO-08, majors, degree fields and qualifications by Peernovo.
Descriptions and tasks are Peernovo's own words, written from the facts in the Occupational Classification of the People's Republic of China (2022 edition). Job titles and work types are the classification's own.
Updated 4 October 2026