Category News of China

Recruitment fair for overseas graduates

A job fair targeting overseas graduates was held recently in Beijing. It attracted more than one thousand graduates who had returned to China, diploma in hand.

45 companies and institutions attended the fair, bringing nearly 600 job opportunities with them. Some potential employers included the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shougang Group, and China Agricultural University. On the other side, graduates of overseas universities have adjusted their requirements, such as location and salary.

She said most of her fellow students had lowered their expectations on salary. But many employers say they are not interested in the educational background of job seekers. What they care for is the actual ability to work.

Overseas Graduate, said, “The advantage of overseas graduates is mainly in their language skills. But as foreign-funded firms are in depression, there is less room for us to make use of our advantage.”

After staying overseas for a long time, these students are not familiar with the domestic working environment. This is a major concern for employers who attended the fair. Some overseas graduates say they hope there will be more chances for them to have face-to-face talks with domestic firms, because that will help them get the experience they need.

Graduates struggle as China slows

At a recent job fair in Beijing, thousands of soon-to-graduate Chinese university students dashed from employer to employer handing over their resumes.

Just a few hours after the two-day fair opened, one company had received 50 job applications for just five positions.

Final-year Chinese students, like others across the world, are currently looking for their first job as they prepare to graduate.

But in China this is the first time in many years that the outlook has been so bleak – and this year there will be 6.1 million new graduates.

The vast China International Exhibition Centre in Beijing has several aircraft-hanger-sized halls, and last week it hosted a job fair geared towards graduates.

Fewer jobs

Companies with stalls at the fair said there were just not as many jobs available this year compared to previous years.

One of those with fewer vacancies was Best Talent, a recruitment firm that finds senior and middle managers for international companies.

“There are a lot of candidates at the moment, but even those with a good education are finding it difficult to find jobs,” said the company’s Vicky Liu as she accepted a curriculum vitae from yet another job hopeful.

A few months ago, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated that about 12% of last year’s graduates had still not found jobs.

That figure was three times higher than the official urban unemployment rate.

Last week’s fair attracted students from across China, including 24-year-old Zhang Hai, who is about to graduate from a university in far-off Nanjing.

“Because of the financial crisis the outlook is not that good,” said Mr Zhang, who is spending two months in China’s capital looking for work.

“There are not that many jobs, but lots of students looking for work so obviously there’s a lot of competition,” he added.

Mr Zhang, who has been studying computer science, has been given money by his family to rent a flat in Beijing while he looks for work.

“I’m just about to graduate, I’m getting older and I’m still using the family’s money so of course there’s some pressure on me to find a job,” he said.

Who to blame?

Despite the tough competition, students do not seem to be blaming the government for the current difficult job situation.

“It’s a pity, but I can’t complain too much. I just have to continue looking for something suitable,” said Wang Jiumei, who also attended last week’s Beijing job fair.

The 25-year-old student, who studies English in the nearby city of Tianjin, intends to go abroad to continue her studies if she cannot get a job.

Chinese government officials will be pleased to hear that students are not blaming them for their poor employment prospects.

They had been worried that high graduate unemployment could lead to discontent which, in turn, could cause social unrest.

The Tiananmen protests, which took place 20 years ago in May 1989, showed the government that dissatisfied students are capable of taking their demands onto the streets.

“For the last 20 years the government has been concerned about keeping the university population happy,” said Arthur Kroeber, managing director at Beijing-based economic research firm Dragonomics.

He said the current employment problems facing graduates was not just because of fewer jobs, but also because there are now more graduates.

But Mr Kroeber believes the problem will sort itself out over time as university students lower their expectations.

“Certain kinds of clerical jobs that used to require only a high school education will increasingly be taken up by people who have a university education,” he said.

Help from the government

But the Chinese government is not just sitting idly by and hoping that will happen. Officials are trying everything they can think of to help graduates find a job this summer.

In the city of Weifang, in Shandong Province, officials in one government department have been told they each have to find jobs for three graduates.

In a country where personal networks are important, Weifang officials have been asked to use all their contacts and influence.

Beijing city government has just announced a scheme to employ 1,600 graduates on three-year contracts as assistants to officials in the villages around the city.

This will not only help develop rural areas, but also find jobs for students who might otherwise be out of work.

The salary for these positions is relatively low – 2,000 yuan ($293, £183) a month for the first year – but the city government is promising other perks to encourage potential applicants.

After their contracts finish, village assistants could be given a Beijing resident’s permit, which is vital for all those that want to continue working in the capital.

There are those who believe the Chinese economy is in good shape – despite the global recession – and will soon bounce back, creating more jobs for graduates.

Oliver Huang, whose company Mediaco helps foreign firms check how their brands are doing in China, is optimistic.

“Markets in Europe and the US are now mature, but China is still an emerging country, where the demand is still huge,” he said at the Beijing job fair.

But with economic growth slowing and unemployment rising, the government is taking no chances.

Officials ordered to pull strings for graduates

An order for officials to pull strings to ensure jobs for graduates has sparked heated debate in an east coast city.

The personnel bureau in Weifang, Shandong province, ordered every official in the bureau to use their influence and connections to help at least three university graduates this year, Qilu Evening News reported.

Netizens doubted whether graduates from poor families, among the 60,000 graduates hunting for jobs in Weifang this year, would get priority for assistance.

Zhang Zhengzhi, the deputy director of Weifang’s personnel bureau, said the May 14 order is not compulsory and would give priority to poor students.

“Do the math – 60 officials can only help 180 graduates in our city,” he said.

“We only want to set an example to promote employment rather than take care of all job hunters.”

In the face of a gloomy employment crisis, a Chinese human resources expert yesterday warned that local governments should make more efforts to facilitate the transfer of information between graduates and enterprises.

“The rule may put pressure on officials, who might play tricks with some companies to provide temporary offers to graduates to enhance the employment rate,” said Wu Yongping, deputy director of public policy and management institution under Tsinghua University. “An official’s duty should focus on organizing more employment fairs for students, and providing students’ information to companies.”

China centrally administered SOEs to recruit more graduates

China’s 99 centrally administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) planed to recruit more than 203,000graduates this year as to ease job pressure, the state-owned assets administrator said.

The recruitment number is 7 percent more than that of the previous year.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) said more than 45 centrally administered SOEs would increase their headcounts this year, while 30 of them would hire the same amount of graduates compared with last year.

China National Petroleum Corp., the country’s largest oil and gas producer and supplier, has by far held more than 30 job fairs in universities. It planed to recruit 13,000 graduates this year, an increase of 37 percent year on year.

China Railway Construction Corp., the nation’s largest contractor, has recruited 13,000 graduates, an increase of more than 45 percent, or 4,060 people, compared with 2007.

Among all the SOEs, the Commercial Aircraft Corp. saw the largest increase. It planned to recruit 1,362 graduates, which was212 percent more than its previous plan.

The SASAC said it would strengthen supervision over the SOEs to put in place the recruitment. It also urged to further expand employment by offering more scientific research projects and probation jobs.

Baidu Staff Strikes Over Salary Cuts

Dozens of employees from Baidu’s (Nasdaq:BIDU) South China subsidiary stopped work and began protesting changes to their salaries in front of Guangzhou’s Tianhe District Labor Bureau after negotiations with a Baidu manager failed, reports 163.com. Unnamed employees said they were made to sign a new salary agreement in late April without fully understanding it, and the subsidiary’s sales department was required to sign off on new KPI metrics in March, the report said. The salary revision was carried out nationwide and accepted in Beijing and Shanghai, said a Baidu insider. Baidu did not comment on the news, the report said. Baidu Chief Operating Officer Ye Peng said the company had not experienced a strike and seemed unaware of the protest, according to the report.

The new salary system and KPI requirements, which employees described as “impossible to fulfill,” became effective May 1 and may halve the salaries of most lower-level sales staff, said employees attending the protest. Management will also accept a large pay cut, they said. According to an unnamed mid-level manager, the changes will affect about 200 employees in Guangzhou and more than 1,000 in the entire South China region, including Shenzhen and Dongguan, said the report.

Ye Peng announced the dismissal of three mid-level managers in charge of sales and operation during his visit to the company’s Guangzhou subsidiary on March 27.

Taiwan April jobless rate at record, to rise further

Taiwan’s April seasonally
adjusted jobless rate rose to a record 5.77 percent as
manufacturing and financial sectors were hard hit in what the
island that is suffering from what may be its longest recession,
the government said on Friday. Like most of Asia, Taiwan’s unemployment rate has been
climbing steadily during the global downturn, with analysts
expecting the rise to persist in coming months as any economic
recovery will take time to filter through to the jobs market. In March, Taiwan’s jobless rate hit 5.72 percent.

“Job prospects across various industries have dimmed
tremendously. Unless the global financial market situation
improves, the outlook in the job market remains bleak,” said Sue
Ann Lee, an economist at Forecast Ltd in Singapore. “The uptrend in unemployment is still in sight,” Lee said. Some analysts expect the jobless rate in Taiwan, a key
supplier in the global technology chain, to peak at around 6
percent in late 2009. Taiwan has a total labour force of 10.882
million out of its 23 million population. “Our jobs market is undergoing severe times now,” said Huang
Jiann-jong, an official at the statistics agency, told a news
conference. “We’re still seeing a lot of company closures.” The state planning commission plans to keep the island’s
average jobless rate at 4.5 percent this year, up from 4.14
percent last year, while President Ma Ying-jeou this week said
the unadjusted jobless rate would not rise above 6 percent. Taiwan has been hard hit by an export slump, with its economy in the first quarter shrinking by a record 10.24 percent
from a year earlier, although analysts said the worst was over.

The government on Friday said Taiwan’s commercial sales in
April fell by an annual 9.5 percent, improving from a 12.2
percent decline, with analysts expecting closer trade ties with
China to help boost consumer spending. This week, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co

the world’s top contract chipmaker, said it would
rehire hundreds of laid-off employees after revenue recovered,
although most companies are still keeping their workforce trim. “Overall, the labour market remains fragile and we expect
the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate will ultimately hit
the 6 percent ceiling,” Christopher Wong from HSBC said.

Graduates sign up for jobs in funeral industry

MORE than 100 college graduates signed employment contracts with 15 funeral parlors and cemeteries yesterday, officials said.

Most of the firms will arrange training for the 108 graduates before they start work. The Shanghai Funeral and Interment Association said some jobs, such as selling grave sites, were still available.

“New graduates may not be suitable for sales work,” said Wang Hongjie, director of the association. Such positions usually demand more experience as you need to deal with grieving family members.

Wang said most employees in the industry at present were middle-aged or close to retirement and younger people were needed.

Han Rui, who has just graduated from East China Normal University, has a master’s degree in folklore – the highest academic qualifications among the new hires. She is to train at the Yishan Funeral Parlor in Minhang District.

“I found a sense of belonging in the industry,” she said. “And I believe my major will help me a lot in the work.”

The companies received 3,220 resumes at a funeral industry job fair in March. More than 400 applicants were selected for interviews, of whom 250 participated in short-term training.

Unemployed graduates in China to reach 3 million in 2009

The global financial crisis is predicted to create an army of three million unemployed university graduates in China this year, or about 40 percent of the 7.8 million graduates, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The overall number of jobseekers is expected to swell to 48 million, as economic growth slows to 6.5 percent or less in 2009.

The prospects are bleak for college graduates. Zhao Beiping, a student career counsellor at Wuhan University of Technology, told the Financial Times last month: “Graduates are fixated on getting jobs as civil servants, in foreign companies or big state-owned companies, and in the big cities—in short, jobs which, they have been led to believe, are best-paid and safest.”

The message was that students have to lower their expectations. With rising unemployment, many graduates will have to accept low-paid jobs. Graduates from Wuhan University of Technology, for instance, have already had to lower their starting monthly salaries from between 2,000 and 4,000 yuan (about $US300 to $600) to just 1,800. Some have to compete with rural migrant labourers for jobs.

Zhang Ming, from the China Youth University of Political Science, told the Financial Times that he went to job fairs held at two prestigious universities in Beijing in March. “But the morning was reserved for their own students, and by noon, there was almost nothing left,” he said. Zhang was thinking of looking for work in the export factories of southern China, but with exports down and job losses there, he said he might have to go to more economically backward provinces.

Graduate numbers have been rising as a result of Beijing’s policy of expanding university education over the past decade to supply cheap skilled labour for local and global corporations. In 1998, 3.4 million Chinese students attended university. By 2008, the figure had increased more than six-fold to 21.5 million.

The Wall Street Journal explained: “China is suffering from a higher-education equivalent of a global credit bubble.” Most Chinese children receive basic education so that even poor farmers can be trained to operate factory machinery. At the top of the education ladder are 75 elite universities that are well funded by the central government. In between are 2,100 less prestigious campuses where the vast majority of students are taught in what are little more than substandard degree factories.

The Wall Street Journal commented: “While experts say the country needs mid-level technical staff, many of these universities have tended to lure tuition-paying students with programs such as English, tourism, government, journalism and law. These are cheap—no large outlays for equipment are necessary—and appeal to Chinese sensibilities, which see education as a path to a government or other white collar position, and not as training for a technical job.”

The lack of technical staff has driven up wages in recent years, lowering the profitability of US corporations operating in China. According to the Wall Street Journal, Beijing should focus more centrally on providing technically trained graduates to meet the needs of global investors.

When it ordered the university expansion in 1998, Beijing paid little toward the programs that ultimately cost nearly $US100 billion, forcing campuses to accumulate large debts and charge extortionate tuition fees. The policy of “user pays” was part of Beijing’s unleashing of market forces across the board, from the dismantling of state industry to the privatisation of urban housing and healthcare.

In the economically backward province of Anhui province, its 50 universities now owe $1.2 billion to banks. Some institutions have had to use half their tuition fees just to make debt payments. Even the more developed Guangdong province had to spend $30 million last year to prevent a number of campuses from defaulting. Teachers’ wages and equipment purchases had to be cut, while class sizes have generally doubled across the country.

Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, for example, enrolled just 1,500 students until 1998 and also ran hospitals and research institutions. By government order, the university was forced to increase enrolments by a third. As the tiny campus in downtown Nanjing could not hold the new students, they were forced to stay in local hotels. Cafeterias were converted to classrooms. In 1999, the university was forced to borrow $200 million from a consortium of banks to expand further. The campus was moved to Nanjing’s Xianlin University City, which houses 11 other universities and is plagued with corruption and profiteering.

Such “university cities” have sprung up across China as part of the property boom. In 2004, government auditors found that only half of the Nanjing “university city” was used for education. The rest comprised commercial projects run by corrupt officials and real estate speculators.

Teachers at the Nanjing medicine university were angry, the Wall Street Journal reported. Ji Wenhui, a scholar of classical Chinese medical texts, complained that the library’s holdings had increased by just one half—compared to the 11-fold increase of students to 17,000. The university had 1,200 faculty and staff, only 20 percent more than when it was much smaller.

Ji told the newspaper that the school was at one point paying $60 million a year in interest, compared to total revenues of just $30 million. In 2006, the provincial government intervened to restructure the university’s loans by using one-quarter of its budget to pay off debt and cutting teachers’ salaries by a quarter.

The sharp rise in unemployed graduates has provoked fears in Chinese ruling circles of social unrest. Beijing is still haunted by the spectre of the large-scale student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which unleashed broader protests by workers that were only crushed with the use of tanks and heavily-armed troops. The Tiananmen Square massacre paved the way for a flood of foreign investment to exploit China’s cheap labour under police-state conditions.

Chinese capitalism’s high rates of economic growth over the past 20 years have only intensified the country’s social and economic contradictions, which will inevitably produce explosive social struggles.

In the 1980s, university graduates joined the privileged state bureaucracy, while workers were employed by state industry. Today, most workers are private sector employees with little social protection, and are now suffering mass lay-offs, due to the global economic crisis. Most university graduates are not part of the emerging middle classes, but are merely skilled labourers, subject to the same capitalist exploitation.

Last month, to head off discontent, the Chinese regime ordered local authorities and state enterprises to hire more graduates. However, many of the state industries that used to guarantee jobs to graduates have been sold off or destroyed. In the civil service exam last year to join the state bureaucracy, there were only 1.3 jobs available for every 100 applicants.

Unrest is already widespread among Chinese students and graduates. Among workers and the rural poor, tens of thousands of sporadic protests are taking place against job losses, social inequality and rampant official corruption. What Beijing fears is that, as in the past, protests among students will ignite a broader class movement of the working people against the regime and the intensifying capitalist exploitation.

Norges Bank hiring in Shanghai

Norges Bank Investment Management, the world’s third largest sovereign wealth fund after Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, is looking to add to its portfolio management team in Shanghai.

First set up in 1990, NBIM is an entity under the Norwegian central bank responsible for the management of three funds with total market value exceeding $300 billion. It runs the Government Pension Fund, the Government Petroleum Insurance Fund and the Norwegian Foreign Exchange Reserves. Prior to opening its Shanghai office in November 2007, the company already had a presence in London, New York and Oslo.

NBIM received approval as a qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) from the China Securities Regulatory Commission in October 2007 and now runs a fund worth roughly $200 million in China. The Shanghai office is also responsible for maintaining the fund’s Asia-Pacific portfolio, which as at end 2008, represented 16.2% of NBIM’s equity investments and 5.8% of its fixed-income portfolio.

Now NBIM wants to add an investment manager to head up its global technology, media and telecom, or TMT, portfolio to be based in Shanghai. There are also openings for a new CIO, COO, chief risk officer, as well as chief treasurer in its London and Oslo headquarters.

External managers have done well out of NBIM, even against the backdrop of the financial crisis. In 2008 they were able to source $64.4 million in management fees and $75 million in performance fees from the pension portfolio of the fund. It has also contributed $52.3 million in revenue to custodian and settlement services.

But that might be set to change. Where in the past, investment managers at NBIM were given utmost flexibility to run their portfolios likened to mini hedge funds, after its unfortunate bets in financing the likes of Lehman Brothers and agency MBS securities, the market is expecting that NBIM may revert back to its passive investment style.

However, officially, the fund is still open to suggestions for long-only equity mandates between the $50 million to $250 million range. In Asia, it is interested in equities in Thailand, Greater China, South Korea and India, as well as Japanese small-caps. It says it will not invest in non-listed equities, private equity, non-listed real estate, option strategies, socially responsible investment (SRI) funds, top-down asset allocation funds, balanced portfolios or convertibles.

Online Email Shows Microsoft Will Cut Jobs In China

An email, which China’s Xinhua News Agency reports is rumored to be an internal email from Microsoft, is being spread online, stating that a new round of staff reductions at Microsoft will affect the company’s employees in the Greater China region.

According to the email which is said to be signed by both Liang Nianjian, CEO of Microsoft Greater China, and Zhang Yaqin, chairman of Microsoft China Research and Development Group, the global staff reduction will affect few of employees in Greater China, but the company has not disclosed the exact number of employees to be involved.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, reportedly sent an email to all staff of the company on May 5, announcing that that company would quickly complete its plan of reducing 5000 staff to lower employees’ distress. Earlier this year, Microsoft already cut about 1400 jobs globally, and at that time, a few of the employees in China were affected.

So far, there is no direct comment from Microsoft China on the report.