Archives 2010

EMPLOYMENT LAW ALLIANCE EXPANDS PRESENCE IN CHINA

San Francisco –
Partners from the Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Shenzhen and Haikou offices of Jun Le Law Office Join ELA

SAN FRANCISCO – The Employment Law Alliance (ELA) has added five new member offices across China, giving the network an on-the-ground presence in 30 member offices in Asia. The ELA is the world’s largest network of more than 3,000 specialized labor and employment lawyers dedicated to assisting employers with legal needs in the U.S. and internationally.

The recent additions are partners from the China-based Jun Le Law Office and include: Dongpeng Wang in the Beijing office, Jianjun Ma in the Shanghai office, Jie Li in the Dalian Office, Xueyong Jiang in the Shenzhen office, and Ruhai Xia in the Haikou office.

“International corporations have long been attracted to China’s extraordinary economic growth and are rapidly opening facilities throughout the country. Ensuring the companies’ policies are compliant with Chinese labor and employment laws is difficult as the laws often vary from city to city,” said Stephen J. Hirschfeld, Esq., CEO of the ELA. “The ELA gives multi-national companies comprehensive, efficient and cost-effective assistance on the ground in each city, region and jurisdiction via truly local experts. We are thrilled to be working with partners at Jun Le as these highly regarded attorneys have intimate knowledge of China’s business practices and employment regulations.”

The ELA offers in-house counsel and human resource executives comprehensive legal guidance in every U.S. state and internationally. Its Global Employer Handbook allows free, 24/7 access to updated legal reference materials and information. The ELA also serves as a resource for trends and issues in employment via its America At Work polls on matters impacting daily business operations around the globe.

“We are pleased to be working collaboratively with our fellow ELA members around the globe. Not only will we be offering our employment law expertise here in China, but our clients with international operations will benefit tremendously from our ability to tap a wealth of reputable legal resources in the vast majority of the world. Not even a global law firm is able to provide such comprehensive experience and coverage,” said Wang.

About The Employment Law Alliance:
The Employment Law Alliance is the world’s largest network of labor and employment lawyers. With specialists in all 50 states and more than 100 countries, the ELA provides multi-state and multi-national companies with seamless and cost-effective services worldwide. On the net at: www.employmentlawalliance.com.

Shanghai Overtakes Tokyo as Busiest Asia Stock Market

Shares worth $5.01 trillion changed hands on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2009, compared with $4.07 trillion on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

By Zhang Shidong and Shiyin Chen

(Bloomberg) — Shanghai overtook Tokyo as Asia’s biggest stock market by trading value last year, as an 80 percent jump in China’s benchmark index boosted equities demand.

Shares worth $5.01 trillion changed hands on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2009, compared with $4.07 trillion on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Shanghai and Tokyo exchanges were ranked third and fourth globally, the Nikkei newspaper reported, citing the World Federation of Exchanges. Only the Nasdaq stock market and the New York Stock Exchange had higher trading volumes than Shanghai.

“As an emerging market, China has a very high ratio of stocks changing hands,” said Li Jun, a strategist at Central China Securities Holdings Co. in Shanghai. “Increased new share sales are also one reason behind the high turnover. It’ll probably take one year or two for China to catch up with the world’s biggest.”

The Securities Regulatory Commission on Jan. 8 approved short sales, stock index futures and margin trading. Morgan Stanley said the reforms may boost transaction volume by 50 percent, helping to usher China’s market into a “new era.”

The Shanghai Composite Index rebounded last year from a 65 percent loss in 2008 after the government introduced a 4 trillion-yuan ($585.9 billion) stimulus package, encouraged banks to advance record loans and subsidized individual purchases of cars and home appliances. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose 19 percent.

Shanghai has the world’s third largest stock market by market capitalization, briefly overtaking Tokyo in July 2009. New York is the biggest by market cap.

Mainland companies raised 207.6 billion yuan from initial public offerings in 2009, double from the previous year, according to Bloomberg data.

China Overtakes Germany as World’s Biggest Exporter

Chinese officials say the country’s exports surged in December to edge out Germany as the world’s biggest exporter.

The official Xinhua news agency reported Sunday that figures from the General Administration for Customs showed that exports jumped 17.7 percent in December from a year earlier.

Huang Guohua, a statistics official with the customs administration, said the December exports rebound was an important turning point for China’s export sector.

Huang added that the jump was an indication that exporters have emerged from their downslide.

However, although China overtook Germany in exports, China’s total foreign trade — both exports and imports — fell 13.9 percent in 2009.

China Mobile Fires Vice Chairman for ‘Irregularities’

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) — China Mobile Ltd. fired Vice Chairman Zhang Chunjiang from the world’s largest phone carrier by market value citing “alleged serious financial irregularities.”

Zhang was voted off China Mobile’s board at a meeting of its members yesterday, according to a company statement that gave no details of allegations against him. The latest edition of Caijing Magazine reported the former executive was being investigated for falsifying earnings and hiding losses while he was an executive at another Chinese telecom company.

Zhang was ousted from parent China Mobile Communications Corp. after a Xinhua News Agency report Dec. 26 said the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, the nation’s main anti-corruption body, had made him the subject of an investigation over an unspecified “serious disciplinary breach.” His firing will not affect China Mobile’s operations, said Peter Ho, an analyst at Quam Ltd. in Hong Kong.

“I think Zhang’s going will have little impact on the company,” said Ho, an analyst at Quam Ltd. in Hong Kong. “The company has a good management team in place and he is not a key member.”

A China Mobile spokeswoman in Hong Kong, Rainie Lei, declined to discuss the nature of the “economic issues” faced by Zhang beyond saying they won’t affect the company.

Shares in China Mobile rose 1.6 percent to close at HK$74.45 in Hong Kong trading, extending gains made since the corruption investigation was announced to 6.7 percent. The benchmark Hang Seng index, which rose 0.1 percent today, has advanced 3.8 percent in the same period.

Under Scrutiny

Zhang was under scrutiny by the commission for possible misdealing at China Netcom Group Corp. before he joined China Mobile, Beijing-based Caijing said without saying where it got its information. Zhang could not be reached through the main line of the company’s Hong Kong office.

Netcom may have overstated its profit by 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) cumulatively before Zhang left the company in 2008, the Jan. 4 issue of the magazine said. The matter was uncovered by China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. according to the report. Sophia Tso, a spokeswoman for China Unicom, which took over Netcom as part of a government revamp of the telecom sector in 2008, declined to comment on the report.

The former executive, aged 51 according to Caijing, was removed from his posts as Communist Party secretary and vice- president at China Mobile Communications, Hong Kong-listed China Mobile said in an e-mailed statement Dec. 31.

Zhang was named Communist Party secretary at China Mobile Communications in May 2008, when the government ordered the country’s six biggest phone carriers to merge in a reorganization aimed at boosting competition.

Senior Position

The post gave him a more senior position in the state-owned company’s hierarchy than chief executive Wang Jianzhou, industry consultant Duncan Clark said Dec. 30.

Before his tenure at Netcom, Zhang was director of telecommunications administration at the Ministry of Information Industry.

China Mobile Communications owns 74.3 percent of the Hong Kong-listed carrier, which named Zhang as its vice-chairman in June 2008 following his appointment at the parent company.

The probe won’t “materially impact” China Mobile’s business given Zhang’s short tenure at the company, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts Helen Zhu and Lucy Liu wrote in a Dec. 27 report.

IBM Providing Credit and Financing to Businesses in China

AMD and distributors to pilot IBM’s new financing capabilities in the region

TIANJIN, China, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — IBM ( IBM) today announced that its lending unit has signed a financing deal with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD) and its distributor network that will begin the flow of cash and credit in an important economic development zone in China.

Late last year, the Tianjin Government provided IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing business segment of IBM an exclusive license to provide accounts-receivable lending (commonly referred to as ‘factoring’) in the Tianjin Binhai New Area, a key economic development zone, designed by the government to provide support for innovative business initiatives.

“One of the keys to economic recovery is the successful partnering of private and public sectors,” said Mario Bernardis, general manager for worldwide commercial financing, IBM Global Financing. “This new partnership with IBM Global Financing and the Tianjin Government will bring great benefits to businesses looking to speed up the conversion of their invoices to cash. We are grateful to the Tianjin Administrative Bureau of Industry and Commerce for granting IBM this factoring license – a first of its kind in China.”

Credit is a key concern for businesses all over the world trying to keep their balance sheets healthy. As goods and services pass through their vendor supply network, companies must sometimes wait from 90 to 120 days to get paid. With this new factoring license, IBM recently established a new operating entity called IBM Factoring (China) Company Limited. This new IBM entity will help businesses operating in the country smooth out the time lag between invoice and payment.

IBM Factoring (China) Company Limited has entered into an agreement with Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) to factor AMD sales receivables in China. IBM Factoring (China) Company Limited will purchase receivables resulting from sales by AMD to its main technology distributors. IBM Factoring (China) Company Limited will pay AMD up front for inventory delivered to its distributor network and extend payment terms to these distributors on a flexible schedule.

“This customer-focused financing arrangement can facilitate the flow of AMD’s market-leading solutions throughout the China marketplace,” said Devinder Kumar, AMD senior vice president, corporate controller and treasurer. “Working with IBM Global Financing, our customers in the region can focus on leveraging our technology towards greater profitability and resilience, and let the payment cycle run smoothly in the background.”

IBM Global Financing has been operating in China for more than 10 years. It provides IT leasing and financing to clients across many industries in China, helping them to acquire the IT solutions they need to be successful and competitive. IBM Global Financing also supports the sales and distribution of IBM hardware and software to IBM’s Resellers. IBM’s financing operations drive channel growth through innovative programs such as payment extension programs, and through solutions to reduce collection disputes. In addition, IBM China Leasing Co offers leasing for IBM products.

A 4-trillion-yuan (585.7 billion U.S. dollars) stimulus package, backed by proactive fiscal policy and moderately easy monetary policy, has encouraged consistent gross domestic product growth in China. Economic development zones, like the China’s Tianjin Binhai New Area provide new opportunities for business — foreign and domestic — to help improve profitability and stimulate the economy.

About Tianjin Binhai New Area

Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) is an economic development zone within the jurisdiction of Tianjin municipality in China. The TBNA is located at the intersection of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei economic zone and the Bohai Bay Rim Zone, which accounts for 17% of China’s population and 21% of its GNP.
The region serves as a major hub linking both north and south China, and connects China with northeast Asia. The Area is also one of China’s largest education and high-tech centers, with 25 universities and more than 140 research institutes.
The Tianjin Binhai New Area includes a comprehensive overland transportation network, along with highly-developed sea freight links to over 300 harbors in 170 countries and regions. Tianjin Binhai International Airport is considered one of northern China’s most important aviation freight centers.

More than 70 of the world’s leading 500 corporations, such as Motorola, Toyota and Samsung have opened offices in the Area.

For more information, please visit: http://english.enorth.com.cn.

About IBM Global Financing

IBM Global Financing (IGF), the financing business segment of IBM and the world’s premier single-source provider for multi-vendor IT financing solutions, serves commercial clients ranging from small businesses to the majority of the Global Fortune 100. With assets of $34 billion worldwide, IGF provides project financing, commercial financing and asset-recovery services to 125,000 clients in more than 50 countries.

Additional information can be found at www.ibm.com/financing/cn/zh/.

Toyota’s China car sales up 21 pct in 2009

SHANGHAI, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said on Wednesday it sold 21 percent more cars in China in 2009 compared with a year earlier, lagging rival General Motors’ [GM.UL] 67 percent gain.

Toyota, which competes with Honda Motor (7267.T) and others, sold 709,000 cars in China in 2009, up from 585,000 units a year earlier, it said in a statement.

That compared with 1.83 million vehicles GM sold in China last year, which also includes 1.06 million mostly mini vans, pick-up trucks made at SAIC-GM-Wuling, its three-way venture with SAIC Motor Corp (600104.SS) and Liuzhou Wuling Automobile.

Volkswagen AG (VOWG.DE) has yet to release its annual sales in China, but Winfried Vahland, president and CEO for its China operations said in November he expected the automaker to sell about 1.4 million vehicles in mainland China and Hong Kong last year, up more than 35 percent from 2008. [ID:nHKG261968]

Analysts attributed Toyota’s slower growth to its lack of small cars whose sales have soared this year thanks to government tax incentives.

“GM and Volkswagen are a major beneficiary of the policy incentives favouring small cars, while Toyota’s portfolio in China is not as broad,” said Zhang Xin, an analyst with Guotai Junan Securities.

Still, Toyota’s full-year sales marked an acceleration from 13 percent annual growth in the first nine months of 2009 and 17 percent growth in 2008.

The company originally said in a statement that sales were up 121 percent in 2009, but a company official later clarified that the rise was actually 21 percent.

Masahiro Kato, president of Toyota’s China operations, said in November that the Japanese automaker was expected to sell about 800,000 cars in China next year. [ID:nHKG295551]

Earlier last year, Toyota rolled out revamped version of Vios and Yaris compact cars — both eligible for Beijing’s tax incentives.

It also launched RAV4, a sport utility vehicle produced by its venture with FAW Group in April 2009, followed by Highlander SUV, made at its tie-up with Guangzhou Automobile, the next month.

It did not say how many new models it will roll out in China this year.

Auto sales in China, the world’s largest market, surged last year, boosted by government incentives aimed at bolstering domestic demand. (Reporting by Fang Yan and Jason Subler; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

China’s SAIC Motor tips 900% jump in 2009 profit

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China’s largest automobile manufacturer by sales, SAIC Motor Corp., said Wednesday it expects to post 10 times as much net profit in 2009 as it did in the previous year on the back of a robust jump in sales.

The passenger car and commercial vehicle maker said it expected an increase of more than 900% in 2009 net profit after a 57% jump in vehicle sales to 2.72 million units during the year, according to a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

SAIC, which operates joint ventures with General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG (VLKA.Y 21.70, +0.05, +0.23%) , said earnings per share was expected above 1 yuan in 2009, up from about 0.1 yuan in 2008. That compares with analysts’ median estimate of 0.93 yuan a share, according to FactSet Research.

The company’s strong sales growth in 2009 was aided by government incentives to new car buyers aimed at boosting domestic consumption in the face of the global economic downturn.

However, SAIC (CN:600104 25.24, -0.41, -1.60%) shares were down 2% by mid-morning in a choppy trading session in Shanghai Wednesday, giving up early gains in spite of the performance.

China says already reached 2009 new job target

BEIJING, Dec 12 (Reuters) – In the first 10 months of the year China already exceeded the number of new jobs it aimed to create in 2009, state media said on Saturday, in another sign the country is emerging from the global economic crisis.

China created 9.4 million jobs in urban areas in the first 10 months, exceeding the government’s target of 9 million new jobs for the year, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

It added that about 4.4 million laid-off workers found new work in the January-October period, some 88 percent of the full-year goal of 5 million.

Officials had estimated that more than 20 million migrant workers lost jobs when the global financial crisis hit the Chinese economy, making job creation a priority for the government in its stimulus spending.

On Tuesday, the ministry estimated that China’s stimulus spending was on track to create at least 24 million jobs, offering its rosiest employment outlook since the financial crisis struck last year.

A recovery in employment is an essential precondition for Beijing to wind down its ultra-loose pro-growth policies adopted when the global financial turmoil devastated Chinese exports, leading factories to cut millions of jobs. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Service outsourcing industry robust in China, boosts employment

CHANGCHUN, Jan 03, 2010 (Xinhua via COMTEX) — The global economic meltdown impacted many of the clients of BT Frontline, which provides outsourcing services for the IT systems of docks and logistics companies. But its General Manager, Lawrence Low, is still satisfied with the company’s performance amid the financial crisis and confident about its future.

China’s service outsourcing industry, mostly about software outsourcing, bounced back in the second half of the year from a hard time of three months caused by shrinking demand from the global market, according to Yu Hengzhuang, vice president of Dalian Software Park.

“We have gained access to high-end market and recently entered the Middle East market, which more than offset the impact of the global downturn,” Low said.

“Our business not only survived, it grew and thrived,” Low said with a smile, keeping the exact figures as business secret.

RAPIDLY DEVELOPING INDUSTRY The software outsourcing park in Dalian, the industrial hub in China, attracted 63 new clients in 2009, bringing the overall number of businesses in the park to more than 400, and the park’s total sales are expected to top 20 billion yuan, up 32.9 percent year on year.

The sales of Dalian’s software outsourcing business grew from 200 million yuan (29.3 million U.S. dollars) to more than 30 billion yuan in the past 10 years. A total of 700 companies are in the industry, including 300 joint ventures and more than 40 Fortune 500 companies.

In the first ten months, the industry’s sales in Dalian grew by 33 percent to 33.7 billion yuan and its export grew by 34 percent to 1.1 billion U.S. dollars.

While Dalian has become a world famous hub of software outsourcing after Thomas Fridman compared it with Bangalore in India, another less known industrial hub with equally fast pace in east China’s Jiangsu Province, is taking shape.

The contract value of Jiangsu’s software outsourcing industry reached 3.28 billion U.S. dollars in the first 10 months of the year, a growth of 174 percent. The province has 2,470 companies in the industry, with 290,000 employees, according to statistics from the provincial department of commerce.

The provincial capital Nanjing’s software outsourcing industry had a contract value of 2.1 billion U.S. dollars in the first 11 months of the year, growing by 239 percent.

“The income of China’s software industry, which software outsourcing takes a major part, has been growing by 38 percent annually and its revenue is expected to top 1 trillion yuan in 2010,” said Hu Kunshan, vice chairman of China Software Industry Association.

China’s software industry earned 757.3 billion yuan in 2008, and the figure is expected to reach 900 billion yuan in 2009.

BOOSTING EMPLOYMENT The rapid development of outsourcing industry bears great significance in sustaining economic growth, restructuring economy, stabilizing export and boosting employment, said Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan during a visit to Dalian in November.

More than 60,000 people are working in the software outsourcing industry in Dalian.

China’s outsourcing industry recruited 690,000 new employees, 460,000 of whom were college graduates, in the first 11 months of 2009, according to statistics released on a national conference on commerce.

China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security expects the outsourcing industry to create 1.2 million new jobs in five years, including 1 million jobs for college graduates.

At the end of Sept. 2009, 1.42 million people were working in 8,060 outsourcing companies in China, said Qian Fangli, deputy head of the foreign investment department of the Ministry of Commerce.

The software outsourcing companies in China have enough programmers but lack mature project managers and decision makers, who are on the top of the talent pyramid, said Yu Hengzhuang, vice president of Dalian Software Park.

The gap in talent pool limited the size of such companies to less than 300 people, which is a human resource threshold to carry out core projects with high added value. “That’s why Chinese companies are now the lowest ring of the world software outsourcing chain,” Yu added.

China’s scope for clever job creation

By DANIEL H. ROSEN

While everyone is glad to put 2009 behind them, 2010 could be an even tougher economic year for China. To climb out of the global contraction, Beijing has engineered a property bubble characterized by oversupply in commercial real estate and unsustainable price gains for residential property. The consequences of this will bite in the new year.

To soak up and justify this excess, China’s leaders are trying to stoke demand by accelerating the already epic urbanization trend, reducing constraints on migration and urban registration. The leadership is betting on the connection between accelerated urbanization and consumption, too. In 2008, 43% of China’s population was considered urban, versus an average of 79% for Latin America, 73% in the euro area and 82% in the U.S: China still has a long way to go.

By front-loading this urban growth, China will bolster prices for upstream raw materials like iron ore and aluminum in the near term and keep construction companies busy. But many people are concerned that China’s urban factories already are overbrimming with overcapacity in almost all sectors, and boosting urban migration will just aggravate overproduction, which will spill into world markets.

If China is already suffering overcapacity in everything, then indeed swelling the urban population would just exacerbate problems. But it isn’t. In fact, there are huge swaths of economic activity and employment simply missing from the Chinese marketplace. Policies that address the reasons for this can create tens of millions of new jobs in traditional and new sectors in the years ahead, adding to domestic consumption and diverting the country from a collision course with its trading partners.

Consider three sectors: healthcare, manufacturing white collar, and education.

Healthcare: China has 1.6 doctors per thousand people; the U.S. has more than 23. Not that China wants to replicate everything about U.S. healthcare, but given rising pathology and mortality due to aging baby boomers, changes in diet, lifestyle, longevity and environmental contamination, filling this shortfall is critical. Reaching the U.S. ratio would mean adding almost 30 million doctors, not to mention multiples of the current low numbers of supporting staff—nurses, palliative-care specialists, hospital administrators and hundreds of other subspecialties comprising the modern healthcare sector.

Manufacturing White Collar: For all its storied manufacturing-sector prowess, China’s goods makers skimp on R&D, quality control, brand management, financial planning, environmental-health safety and almost every other white-collar position that turns a manufactured commodity into a branded product and generates intangible value for the firm: value that makes up a third or more of assets in most Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development firms.

While China Inc. may have overcapacity on the assembly line, it has extraordinary undercapacity in the business functions that turn a $10 generic toaster coming out of a Chinese factory into a $75 Braun-branded toaster sold at retail in the U.S. or Europe.

China would need at least 60 million more white-collar workers to be comparable with the U.S. on this score. Given the different development levels, we might cut that in half, but 30 million missing office-worker bees is a lot of jobs.

Education: The missing-jobs number is also huge in education. China has 10 teachers per thousand people, as opposed to 22 in the U.S. Basic education for urban migrant-workers’ children is a critical task if accelerated urbanization is to generate more prosperity and not just worsening income inequality, social tension and developmental problems like crime and an underclass. China currently needs another 16 million teachers to reach the ratio in the U.S., as well as attendant teacher-trainers, guidance counselors, school administrators, and other related employees.

Of course there are reasons why these jobs don’t already exist.

In the case of healthcare and education, Beijing has chosen to save resources or transfer them to state-owned enterprises rather than make sufficient public expenditures, while simultaneously preventing private enterprises from investing in these areas as businesses. There are some low-price private hospitals and clinics in China, but with limited resources and market shares. In manufacturing, the cost of capital to build up white collar employment for private and SME firms is typically two-to-five times that of the low nominal rates heavier state-owned enterprises enjoy. And when they are able to build a brand and their own intellectual property, poor enforcement of regulations and intellectual-property protection jeopardizes their ability to recover their investment.

These three sectors just scratch the surface of new job potential: China is far from suffering “overcapacity in everything.” The problem is that what is overcapacity doesn’t create many jobs.

Steel, aluminum, cement, plate glass and upstream petrochemicals together create just 14 million jobs in a labor pool of 780 million, which is fewer than the number of service-sector jobs in Guangdong Province alone.

China’s consumption-urbanization policy thinking is the right way to go, but only if policy simultaneously addresses the biases in the financial sector that starve job-creating sectors while larding other industries with capital. What China needs to make its urbanization strategy the solution rather than an unsustainable bubble machine, to put it simply, is affirmative action for labor-intensive industries.