Category News of China

Fewer employers aiming to hire staff

JUST over a third of employers in China, or 34 percent, plan to increase staff numbers in the first quarter, 10 percent fewer than last quarter.

However, the figure remains the highest in Asia, according to a report released yesterday, and many respondents remain optimistic about their company’s performance in 2009, with 47 percent saying it would be “excellent” or “good.”

The Hudson Report surveyed the expectations of almost 3,000 key executives from multinational organization in all major industry sectors in Asia, with 858 of them based in China.

The steepest decline in hiring expectation was in the banking and financial services sector, from 50 percent last quarter to 29 percent this quarter.

The media, pubic relations and advertising sector also reported falling hiring expectations, from 33 percent last quarter to 18 percent.

Last year some 61 percent of respondents had expected to increase hiring in the first quarter.

The percentage who forecast a head count reduction rose from 1 percent in 2008 to 8 percent this quarter.

The consumer sector was the most optimistic about the future, with 62 percent forecasting excellent or good performance in 2009, while respondents in information technology and telecom were the least confident, with 15 percent believing their company’s prospects would be poor this year.

Despite the decline in hiring expectations, almost half of the respondents were willing to pay salary increases of more than 10 percent to attract new people at management level, of which 17 percent of respondents expected pay increases of more than 20 percent, a significantly higher figure than for any other market in Asia, including Japan and Singapore.

Across all sectors, bonuses of more than 10 percent of the employees’ yearly salary were forecast by 32 percent of respondents, of which 6 percent said they would pay bonuses of more than 20 percent. Some 12 percent of respondents were not planning to pay a bonus, 6 percent more than in 2008’s first quarter.

Angie Eagan, Hudson’s Shanghai general manager, said that employers could now pay lower salary increases to attract new managerial hires and were actively recruiting talented candidates displaced by the downturn.

Students flog CVs in flagging market

In an unfortunate reversal of fortune, more than 70 percent of upcoming graduates have yet to secure a job.

“Normally about 70 percent of graduates have job offers in March, but now the situation is completely upside down,” Wu Xiaohui, senior campus recruitment consultant with Shanghai Foreign Service Co Ltd (SFSC), told China Daily yesterday.

According to SFSC’s report, two-thirds of students have sent out more than 30 resumes since last autumn, with one frenzied student even sending out 600 copies to recruiters, Wu said. “The financial turmoil is forcing us to take advantage of every possibility to find a job because many companies have stopped recruiting,” said Xiao Qin, 22, a student from Shanghai International Studies University.

Jia Dong, a computer major graduate, said, “I have hardly missed a chance to hand out my resume since last year – job fairs, campus recruitment sessions or even by e-mail. With more than 120 copies of my resume out there I think I deserve better.”

The report, released Saturday by SFSC, the city’s largest employment agency, surveyed 519 undergraduate and graduate students from 12 local universities.

“The time after the Chinese Spring Festival, especially March, is usually the peak season for fresh graduates to sign job contracts with employers,” Wu Xiaohui, senior campus recruitment consultant with SFSC, said.

According to another survey by SFSC, about 55 percent of the city’s 104 multinational corporations didn’t intend to recruit new staff this year amid the deepening recession.

Among those who plan to hire, half will recruit fewer than 10 people, compared with an average of 50 to 100 people in previous years.

Earlier this month, the SFSC teamed up with 157 multinational corporations to offer 1,000 vocational training opportunities, 1,000 internship positions and 1,000 job openings for graduates in the city to help ease the shrinking job market.

Taiwan job seekers expand search to China

Taipei – Taiwan’s economic woes are causing an increasing number of the island’s residents to search for work in China, a job placement agency said Friday.

According to the 104 Job Bank, an average of 22,000 Taiwan job seekers a day contacted the placement agency in March, asking for for jobs in China, up 20 per cent from February and up 30 per cent year-on-year.

The figure is the highest since the human resources agency started operations in 1996.

In March the company could offer 5,300 jobs in China so far, one job for every four job seekers wishing to work in China.

All those jobs were provided by China-based Taiwan companies for which the placement centre serves as as online ‘matchmaker.’

Taiwan’s jobless rate hit a record 5.33 per cent in January, driven up by the global financial crisis.

Taiwan media reported on a growing number of people committing suicide after losing the jobs and running into debts.

More teaching jobs for graduates

Schools across China will hire 50,000 college graduates as short-term teachers this year to help ease employment pressure.

That is almost triple the number of teachers hired last year.

They will work under three-year contracts with local education departments and be paid by a special central government fund, the Ministry of Education said.

“Most of the jobs are only open to students who will graduate from colleges this year,” ministry spokeswoman Xu Mei said on Wednesday.

“But some teaching positions are open to outstanding degree holders who graduated in past years, such as those who have volunteer teaching experience in rural schools,” she said.

The short-term teacher project was launched in 2006 to help college graduates find employment.

The teachers will work at primary and high schools, mostly in rural areas.

Besides salary from the central government, they may get bonuses and subsidies from local governments, Xu said.

After the three-year contract expires, schools will decide whether to renew the contracts.

The teachers will be recruited through public job fairs.

The ministry also announced other policies this week to help ease employment pressure on college graduates.

Graduates recruited by the army will have their education loans paid by the government and those who are awarded an honor in the army can be recruited as postgraduate students without taking the difficult entrance examination.

The country will also provide subsidies and reduce taxes for small and middle-sized enterprises that recruit college graduates this year.

To promote employment, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) urged local departments to create more jobs for graduates.

“Local governments will provide special subsidies for college graduates who work at the grassroots,” Wang Yadong, deputy director of MHRSS’ employment promotion department, said in an earlier interview.

Special funds and subsidies have been earmarked to encourage college graduates to work in rural and grassroots positions or to start their own businesses.

However, “most graduates are focusing on jobs in large cities and few would like to start their own businesses”, Wang said.

A recent study by the MHRSS found only 0.3 percent of college graduates in 2007 started their own businesses.

That is much lower than some developed countries where the rate is about 40 percent.

A total of 6.11 million fresh graduates – 520,000 more than in 2008 – are expected to enter the job market this year.

Chinese Car Designers: Lots of Talent, Few Job Prospects

China’s car makers are increasingly ambitious, as illustrated by plans to grow at home and, in some cases, expand abroad. One big impediment they face in taking on their foreign rivals: design.

Big global companies spend years, and millions of dollars, designing new cars. But many home-grown Chinese auto makers actually do very little of that.

A senior executive of one small auto maker in Hebei recently laid it out for us over a cup of tea: the reason his company can sell cars much cheaper than foreign auto makers who also produce cars in China, he said, is that his company does no engineering or design work whatsoever. Instead, they tell an outside engineering consultant which existing model they want to copy, and ask them to come up with a product counterfeited in a way that it won’t attract intellectual property lawsuits. In some cases that means companies combining styling ideas from two separate cars into one.

The problem isn’t a lack of talent — as China Journal found one recent day on a visit to the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. There we met Phoenix Wang and Jackie Lin, two students whose edgy car designs have put them near the top of their class. Both Wang, a 22 year old from Sichuan, and Lin, a 23 year old from Guangdong, have long been determined to pursue car design professionally. But they and their peers have dim prospects in a domestic industry that doesn’t value their skills.

Their instructor is trying to change that. Ed Wong is a former General Motors Corp. designer who over the past five years also has worked off and on as an outside design consultant for Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Corp., helping the company come up with uniquely-designed and –styled cars of its own, which it aims to launch over the next few years. Wong — a 1987 graduate of the Art Center College of Design, the Harvard of car design, in Pasadena, Calif. — went to work at GM’s main design studio near Detroit before becoming a car-design instructor in the mid-90s, teaching car design in California and Hong Kong.

Since arriving in Beijing, he has designed, among other cars, the Beijing Warrior, the rugged vehicle China’s army now uses as its main jeep, and the Beijing 800 sedan and several other concept cars Beijing Auto showed at the Beijing auto show in 2008.

Wong joined the Central Academy of Fine Arts last September as director of the school’s transportation design department, and he is helping change the outlook of students like Wang and Lin.

Wang says she was planning to continue her design studies in the U.S., but Wong brought with him a car-styling curriculum similar to that used at Art Center, and now she no longer feels she needs to go abroad to pursue her dream. Initially an industrial design student learning to design cell phones and bicycles, Lin says Wong “changed my life and outlook.”

Wang and Lin have it better than many of their fellow aspiring car designers. They plan, for now, to work with Wong after graduation, consulting for Beijing Auto. But until Chinese auto makers start taking design more seriously, theirs will remain a challenging job market, and a lot of talent will go to waste.

China’s employment situation ‘grave’: minister

BEIJING — Human Resources and Social Security Minister Yin Weimin warned of a “grave” employment situation in China on Tuesday, but said government measures to boost employment have taken “initial effects”.

With the big drop in company posts, a large number of migrant workers who lost their jobs, and the labor-intensive industry falling as major victim amid global financial downturn, “the employment situation in China is very grave,” he said at a press conference on the sidelines of the parliament’s annual full session.

In face of the grave situation, the Chinese government has taken a series of measures, which have shown “initial effect”, he said.

In the first two months of this year, China saw “a reverse on the dropping trend” in new labor posts in cities, he said.

The number of new laborers stood at 690,000 and 930,000 in January and February, compared with 550,000 and 380,000 in November and December last year, according to Yin.

China recorded the first rise in company posts in February after it dropped for four consecutive months from October last year, he said.

“It’s only a moderate increase of 1 percent, but it’s good news,” he said.

“But can we then judge from the two pieces of good news that our employment situation is turning for the good? I think we should keep on observing the overall economic development,” he said.

China’s export continued the downward tendency in February and will face a “grim” situation in the “coming foreseeable months”, said Chen Deming, Minister of Commerce, at the conference .

“Affected by the global economic recession, China has undergone negative growth in both import and export since last November,” said Chen.

Wanda to offer 60,000 new jobs in 2009

Wanda Group, one of the country’s largest private property developers, will offer 60,000 new jobs this year, a company executive said on Wednesday.

“Most of the jobs are created by our rapid expansion this year,” Wang Jianlin, Wanda’s chairman, told China Daily on the sidelines of the annual sessions of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Wanda plans to build eight shopping malls and two five-star hotels this year. The company has spent 11 billion yuan in grabbing five pieces of land in Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, Tianjin, Hefei and Hohhot since the fourth quarter of last year, despite the sluggish property market.

Xinjiang vows job offers to fresh graduates

Unemployed graduates will get a job offer within 12 hours of an application in the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, officials said Monday.

A record 58,000 graduates are expected to enter the job market in the region this year, up 9 percent from last year, prompting Xinjiang to roll out a slew of measures to help them find jobs amid the financial crisis.

“We can ensure that a graduate student can get at least one offer within 12 hours in Urumqi,” said Li Zhi, party head of Urumqi. Li is in Beijing to attend the ongoing session of the National People’s Congress.

Although he didn’t say what kind of positions would be offered to students, he said that priority would be given to ethnic minority students.

“We will encourage employers to hire ethnic minority students and the government at all levels will arrange positions for them,” Li said.

The efforts are part of a package for all Xinjiang graduates as the region aims to maintain an employment rate of over 70 percent among fresh graduates, said Tian Wen, party chief of Xinjiang personnel bureau.

Xinjiang’s relatively small economy, however, means that there will be fewer urban jobs than the number of new graduates. As a result, they will be urged to go to the countryside to teach or practice as medical workers. Five percent college graduates in the region have been working in rural areas since last year.

“We offer tailored positions to students to support medical and educational developments in rural Xinjiang,” Tian said.

She did not specify how many such positions are offered but said that 80 percent positions are reserved for ethnic minority students.

Both officials called for graduates to take frontline jobs, with Tian saying multiple vacancies exist in the public welfare sector.

Besides, the region has also established five job-training bases in Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture, Urumqi and Aksu. Among the other measures to boost employment among new graduates are subsidizing companies that employ graduates, offering small loans to graduates starting their own businesses, employment guidance to students and organizing specialized job fairs.

Wen encourages self-employment among the jobless

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday showed his concern over the country’s jobless migrant workers and other unemployed people and encouraged them to start self-employment.

Wen said he had been deeply concerned over the employment issue, including those of migrant workers, college graduates and jobless urban families.

He was in response to a netizen’s question on-line saying “as one member of the migrant labor force I felt very difficult to find jobs when the financial woes unfolded.” The netizen said he hoped to start his own business via small loans which could be repayed in three or five years.

“Your requirement is reasonable,” he said while chatting with netizens at the central government website (www.gov.cn).

“Employment is not only related to one’s livelihood but also one’s dignity,” Wen said.

Migrant workers were a special social group born in China’s social transition after the initiation of the reform and opening-up policy.

Earlier official figures show about 15.3 percent of the 130 million migrant workers had returned jobless from cities to the countryside against the backdrop of the global economic downturn.

Wen said he acknowledged that the statistics were not quite accurate as some people believed the number of laid-off migrant workers amounted to 20 million and others said the number was about 12 million.

“We do not want to comment the accuracy of the statistics at the moment. The fact is that the financial crisis has caused a huge impact on migrant workers,” he said.

As a saying goes “a city fire causes calamity to pond fish”, Wen said migrant workers bore the most severe impact of the financial woes.

He said migrant workers did not have much complaint over the government and quietly returned to their hometowns, “some engaging in farming again, others still seeking jobs.”

Wen said the government should encourage them to start their own business by offering tax stimulus and training opportunities.

China’s State Council, or the cabinet, issued a notice on February 10 that urged governments at all levels to make every possible effort to expand employment.

“I want to take the opportunity to extend my gratitude to our migrant workers,” he said, adding they had made great contribution to the nation.

China Aviation Giant To Recruit Foreign Execs

China’s huge state aircraft maker AVIC said on Thursday it will look beyond national borders to recruit foreign executives who can help it compete internationally.

The unusual global recruitment effort comes just months after the Aviation Industry Corporation of China was formed by the merger of two state aircraft makers, focusing on big projects such as a locally developed regional jet to reduce China’s reliance on Boeing and Airbus.

The move by the AVIC group, which consists of more than 200 enterprises and 21 listed companies, was out of the norm for a secretive company that also builds the aviation hardware for China’s military.

“Our goal is to become globally competitive,” Gao Jianshe, the group’s executive vice president, told reporters. “And to do that, we need executives with international experience.”

The group, which notched up 2008 sales of CNY166 billion yuan (USD$24.3 billion), compared with USD$60.1 billion for Boeing, aims to recruit 13 vice presidents to assist in a broad range of activities including research, asset management, business development and marketing.

The recruitment move comes after Boeing posted an unexpected fourth-quarter loss and said it could cut 10,000 job this year, while expecting more plane order cancellations.

AVIC’s move towards globalisation is not confined to staff.

State media said last month that China welcomed investors to take a 30 percent stake in its newly incorporated jet engine company — in which AVIC holds a 40 percent stake — that supplies engines to the regional jet ARJ21.

China has signed up a total of 208 orders for the ARJ21, unveiled in late 2007, but the vast majority are from domestic carriers.