Archives April 2013

China has 48 million sci-tech personnel

China’s has 48 million people working in the fields of science and technology, but the pool of personnel still lacks high-level scientists for strategic needs, a former human resources official has revealed.

Though the numbers of both sci-tech current workers and graduates outnumber those of the United States, China is not a great power of talents, Xu Songtao, former deputy head of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said at a seminar on Monday.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Science and Technology, China has just over 10,000 people classed as high-level innovative talents, said Xu, also an adviser to the China Talent Research body.

Despite China being a marine leader, the number of Chinese scientists registered in a database of oceanic talents is less than 100, one-twentieth of that of the United States, he added.

“The innovative capabilities and competitiveness of Chinese talents are also weak,” Xu said, urging officials at all levels to pay great attention to the nurturing of talented people and to initiate a number of recruitment projects.

He also suggested creating a competitive environment to eliminate the incapable as well as to form a reserve of strategic talents.

Kindergartener tops list of Shanghai women’s favorite jobs

Kindergarten teacher is the favorite occupation of Shanghai women, according to the report from the East China Institute of Talent Science.

More than 35 percent of Shanghai females chose teacher as their preference when given an occupational choice, and most of them would like to work in kindergartens.

The Shanghai Morning Post listed the major reasons for the job’s popularity, including the job’s stability, economic security, and months of winter and summer vacation.

Shanghai needs at least 10,000 kindergarten teachers in the next three years, according to the Ministry of Education.

The new standards for kindergartens, drafted by the ministry, say that full-time kindergartens must be equipped with three teachers for each of its classes, while two teachers are needed for each half-day class.

Human resource and administrative positions followed kindergarten teacher as Shanghai women’s second- and third-favorite occupations, with 17 percent of them choosng the former and 14 percent the latter.

Employees less likely to change jobs: MRIC

With significantly less optimism in the Chinese economy, only 22.2 percent of respondents gave a definite “yes” to a MRIC survey in terms of the possibility of seeking a job change in 2013, while the figure was 33.2 percent a year ago.

Executive recruitment company MRIC said in its 2013 Talent Report released on Monday that Chinese mainland professionals are increasingly aware of life-quality issues. Given the longer distances needed to travel to work and days away from home, flexible time is the biggest driver behind the desire for greater work/life balance, which is particularly marked among women on the Chinese mainland.

And while junior professionals are still ambitious enough to seek personal development in the earlier years of their careers, most middle professionals, or 40.6 percent of respondents, said that jobs should meet flexible working needs.

Most top and senior professionals, or 39.9 percent of the respondents, said that fulfilling family obligations is the most important factor for them at present.

As a result, some employers in China have started to implement remote working policies such as working from home one day each week or have Friday afternoons off in return for longer working hours on other days.

MRIC recommended that employers consider implementing similar policies and practices in order to attract and retain women and younger professionals, who are not necessarily low performers but have different work/life balance needs.

Report: Foxconn Worker Jumps From Factory Roof Amidst Job Cuts

At least one employee at Foxconn, the manufacturing giant best known for making Apple products, has reportedly jumped from a factory roof in Shenzhen, China due to concerns over job security.

According to AppleInsider, which cited reports from Chinese micro-blogging website Sina Weibo, a female worker jumped from the roof at Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory this past Friday at 9 a.m. local time but survived. By noon, three other employees had also climbed to the roof of the building and were threatening to jump, the blog said.

According to other reports, a second person jumped off the roof, though there is no word about their condition.

In a statement to PCMag on Monday, Foxconn confirmed that a worker dispute occurred, but did not address whether anyone had jumped from the building.

“We can confirm that on March 29, three employees at our campus in Longhua, Shenzhen were involved in a workplace dispute over the company’s decision to offer them an opportunity to relocate to another Foxconn China facility as part of a shift in production linked to their business group,” the statement reads. “As a result of that dispute, the employees in question gathered at the top of a campus building and stayed there until local law enforcement authorities arrived at the scene. The dispute was resolved peacefully and no one was injured. Any reports to the contrary are totally inaccurate.”

Unfortunately, suicide at Foxconn is not a new phenomenon. At least 14 Foxconn workers in Shenzen and Chengdu have taken their own lives in a string of worker suicides since early 2010. Foxconn has since forced employees to sign a pledge promising that they won’t commit suicide and installed nets outside factory dormitories to deter potential jumpers.

The most recent wave of employee discontent reportedly stems from recent job cuts, lowered wages, and the end of some free amenities. Foxconn is said to have been encouraging some employees to leave the company as part of an effort to cut employee costs.

The electronics maker last month suspended recruitment of new hires, but denied that the hiring freeze was related to slowing iPhone 5 demand.

As of December, working conditions seemed to be improving at Foxconn’s mainland China factories. A New York Times article detailed positive changes at Foxconn’s China-based plants, which have been criticized by global labor rights groups and were audited last year by the Fair Labor Association (FLA), at Apple’s behest.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Monday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern with comment from Foxconn.

China manufacturing recovers modestly in March

The manufacturing sector in China grew faster pace in March 2013, indicating that Asia’s largest economy and the second largest in the world, is recovering modestly. The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) was 50.9 last month, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics and China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing released on April 1. The March PMI is the highest in 11 months an improvement from its 50.1 level in February.

A separate PMI released independently by HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics rose to 51.6 in March from 50.4.

After adjusting for seasonal factors, the HSBC Purchasing Managers’ IndexTM (PMITM) – a composite indicator designed to provide a single figure snapshot of operating conditions in the manufacturing economy posted 51.6 in March, up from 50.4 in February, signalling a modest improvement. Operating conditions in the Chinese manufacturing sector have now improved for five consecutive months.

Production levels increased for the fifth month in a row in March. The rate of expansion accelerated from February to a solid pace, the second-fastest in two years. Behind the rise in output, total new orders rose solidly, and for the sixth month in a row. A number of respondents attributed growth to strengthened client demand. Meanwhile, new export orders also increased, albeit marginally, according to an HSBC press release.

Volumes of outstanding business declined for the second successive month in March. The rate of backlog depletion was broadly unchanged from February, and remained slight overall. Staffing levels, however, were relatively unchanged from the previous month.

Suppliers’ delivery times lengthened in March, following a slight improvement in February. That said, the rate at which vendor performance deteriorated was slight, with just over 6% of panellists recording longer lead times. A number of respondents linked the deterioration to increased orders placed at vendors.

Average input costs faced by manufacturers decreased, following a five-month period of inflation. However, the rate of reduction was marginal, with a number of respondents citing lower raw material costs. Output charges set by manufacturers also declined in March, and for the first time in since last November. The rate of discounting was modest, with approximately 10% of panellists lowering tariffs. A number of respondents attributed the fall to a combination of passing on lower input costs to clients and competitive market pressures.

Purchasing activity in the manufacturing sector rose for the sixth successive month. Growth quickened from February to a solid pace that was the third-strongest in two years. Meanwhile, stocks of purchases fell modestly for the second month in a row. Increased input buying and the depletion of stocks were both associated with increased production at plants.

Finally, inventories of finished goods increased for the first time in six months, albeit marginally. A number of respondents attributed the rise to increased production on the back of stronger client demand.

Report: Lenovo to design own chips

China’s second largest smartphone seller Lenovo will reportedly foray into the chip design segment. The company is expected to design own chips for smartphones and tablets.
“Lenovo is looking to expand its IC design team from 10 to 100 by the mid of this year,” EE Times quoted an industry source with direct knowledge of Lenovo’s recruitment of chip designers. The PC maker will be hiring 40 engineers in Shenzhen and 60 in Beijing.

This initiative appears to be driven by the company’s desire to control its own destiny in smartphones and tablets–a la HiSilicon at Huawei. (HiSilicon is a chip division of Huawei.)

Unlike Samsung or Apple, Lenovo has a checkered history of adopting different apps processors from a variety of suppliers for its smartphones. The company adopted MediaTek’s MT6573 in the Lenovo A60 smartphone in 2011, while it became the first company–outside Samsung –in 2012 to design in Samsung Electronics’ quad-core apps processor Exynos 4 in its LePhone K860.

Lenovo, however, announced earlier this year a 5.5-inch smartphone, dubbed K900, by integrating Intel’s first dual-core Atom chip for phones. The Atom Z2580 is said to have roughly doubled the CPU performance of Intel’s single-core Medfield processor used in Lenovo’s K800 phone, which was introduced a year ago.

While Lenovo might have been enjoying its freedom in choosing the best apps processor available on the market, reality bit hard, sources said, when Samsung Electronics refused to supply its newest version of the Exynos apps processor to the Chinese company.

Indeed, on the growing Chinese smartphone market last year, Lenovo became Samsung’s biggest rival–with Samsung holding a 17.7 per cent share, with Lenovo at 13.2 per cent and Apple at 11 per cent.

Meanwhile, Lenovo has been beefing up its senior management team to prepare itself to become a leading consumer electronics vendor.

The world’s second-largest supplier of personal computers last month (February) named Jerry Yang, the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo, as a “board observer.” Further, Lenovo added Tudor Brown, one of the founders of ARM, as a non-executive director to Lenovo’s roster of seasoned veterans.

It’s far from clear if an internal group of mere 100 IC engineers can make a dent in the already crowded apps processor market. And yet, as Shao Yang, CMO of Huawei Device, recently said in an interview with EE Times, having a chip division of its own could help [the handset company] “negotiate better with other semiconductor companies.”