1978 after Deng took office, China conducted a national survey of scientific and technological personnel. The result is not optimistic. At that time, there were only 3 scientific and technological personnel per 10,000 people in China, which was far lower than that in developed countries (25 in the United States, 23 in Japan and 0/9 in the Federal Republic of Germany). Moreover, the level of scientific research personnel in China is far lower than that in developed countries. In order to catch up with the advanced level in the world, China needs to train a large number of scientific and technological talents.

According to the general survey, a total of12,359 scientific and technical personnel are serving their sentences or being released from prison (criminal offences, non-political reasons), and a few of them have senior titles. The central government decided to immediately resume the work of scientific and technological personnel released from prison, let them return to their original work units, and restore the original cadre level and salary. As long as the detained scientific and technical personnel are not serious criminal offences (in China, serious criminal offences refer to murder, arson and rape), they should be released immediately and returned to their original units to restore their original ranks and salaries.

There are also some professional and technical personnel (the exact number is still unknown) who are idle in society after the Great Leap Forward or during the Cultural Revolution due to reasons such as retirement, resignation, release from prison and decentralization. The central government decided to encourage and arrange these professional and technical personnel to return to the ranks of cadres, give full play to their specialties and serve the economic construction.

In the early 1980s, a national unified five-level professional title system for professional and technical personnel was re-established, and the evaluation of professional titles was carried out in an all-round way. At the end of 1983, there were 5.9 million professional and technical personnel. 94,000 people (1.6%) have senior titles, 1.35 million people (25.7%) have intermediate titles, and 4.32 million people (72.7%) have junior titles.

The process of lawyers becoming part of professionals is interesting. Initially, lawyers were not part of the pyramid of professional technicians. By the end of 1985, there were less than 20,000 lawyers in China, and the society did not recognize lawyers as a legal profession. 1985, the central government realized the importance of lawyers to the legal system, so it transferred a group of cadres from enterprises and institutions to receive short-term legal knowledge training and transferred to the lawyer industry. 1988 defines the titles of lawyers as first-class lawyers, second-class lawyers, third-class lawyers, fourth-class lawyers and paralegals, which are listed in the sequence of professional and technical personnel.