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Chinese visa for high-calibre talents: Faster, easier

High-calibre overseas talents will benefit from a faster visa application process, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) on Tuesday.

The ministry said in a circular that various government organs and state-owned enterprises should submit details of their overseas talent introduction programs to the ministry or the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA).

These departments can apply for visas and residency permits via a priority procedure for talented people as well as their families.

Meanwhile, high-level overseas talents working in the country outside these programs will also enjoy a faster application process if they meet various conditions, said the circular.

The circular was jointly released by the MHRSS, the ministries of public security and foreign affairs, the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the SAFEA.

In Hong Kong, High-Skilled Jobs Decline

Hong Kong is facing an expansion of low-skilled employment at a time when the number of high-skilled jobs is contracting, reflecting a torpid environment for the territory’s financial services industry and other white-collar sectors.

In the second quarter, the number of high-skilled jobs slipped by 0.9% from a year earlier, following a 2.4% drop in the first quarter. By contrast, non-professional jobs surged 3.8% in the second quarter after rising 4.7% in the first.

Overall, total employment rose 2.5% year-on-year to 3.75 million positions in the second quarter. Of these, 1.38 million are high-skilled jobs while 2.37 million are in the low-skilled segment.

The reason for a contraction in the number of high-skilled positions, according to human resources professionals, is weak hiring in the financial sector. The financial-services industry contributes about 20% of employment and just under a fifth to national output but it’s share has been falling. That’s in contrast to rapid growth of the retail sector and other blue-collar industries that have driven GDP growth lately as more mainland Chinese shop here.

Hong Kong’s GDP grew 3.3% in the second quarter, a healthy clip. The jobless rate also remains a relatively low 3.3%. But economists are concerned the increasing reliance on low-skilled sectors could hurt productivity growth and drag on the economy in the future.

“I believe the contraction of Hong Kong professional sector is more related to financial deleveraging over the global economy,” said Hang Seng Bank economist Ryan Lam. “Financial centers like Hong Kong are more vulnerable to the end of the credit-driven era than Singapore, which has a diversified manufacturing base.”

Hong Kong’s recruitment agencies said they’d witnessed a decline in middle-management jobs, especially in financial services.

“The global financial headwind has made companies more cautious in creating permanent headcount or making replacement hiring, especially mid to senior positions,” said Lancy Chui, regional managing director for Greater China at ManpowerGroup.

She noted some financial institutions continue to downsize and restructure operations following the financial turmoil in 2008.

“I don’t see any new posts for professional jobs in financial services this year,” said another senior consultant for a recruitment agency in the city. “It’s only job replacements filled by a junior post, with lower pay.”

Some recruiters point to cost-cutting in the financial-services industry globally as a factor contributing to Hong Kong’s changing employment landscape.

“Managing costs is still the top priority for most organizations in financial services, and this is the main factor behind the current cautious hiring environment,” said George McFerran, Asia Pacific managing director of eFinancialCareers, a recruitment firm.

GDP has gotten a boost in recent quarters from the rising tide of spending by cashed-up Chinese mainlanders visiting the territory to hunt for everything from daily necessities to luxury goods. Between 2007 and 2011, the contribution of tourism, including the retail trade, to the city’s GDP rose to 4.5% from 3.4%.

Alexa Chow, managing director of Centaline Human Resources Consultant Ltd., said she expected demand for non-professional jobs in the retail and services sectors to remain strong for years to come as tourism from mainland China continues to boom.

Still, some economists worry that the trend toward lower-skilled employment may push down economic growth in future quarters.

“A structural shift of employment toward this low-profitability, labor-reliant sector could cause a gradual slowdown in GDP growth,” said Hang Seng Bank’s Mr. Lam. “If this trend continues, Hong Kong could turn into another tourism city filled with low-skilled labor instead of being an international financial center.”

Best Buy CEO indicates company will stay in China

In a memo to employees, Hubert Joly said Best Buy International, including China, remains critical to the company’s future.

Best Buy Co. Inc. CEO Hubert Joly suggested Friday that the company will stay put in China despite speculation on Wall Street that it will eventually sell off its operations in the world’s most populous country.

In an internal memo that announced international President Shari Ballard also will lead human resources, Joly said the company remained committed to its foreign businesses, which includes China, Mexico and Canada.

“Our international businesses are a significant part of our company, and leadership of those businesses remains critical,” Joly wrote.

In some ways, Joly’s memo is his strongest endorsement of China yet. Since joining Best Buy last fall, Joly has conveyed skepticism toward the company’s struggling international operations. The chief executive has devoted most of the company’s resources toward stabilizing its core U.S. retail business, which generates most of its $50 billion in annual revenue.

Last April, Best Buy agreed to sell its 50 percent stake in Best Buy Europe to joint venture partner Carphone Warehouse for $775 million in cash and stock. Analysts suspected Best Buy also would divest its Five Star business, a local electronics chain that Best Buy acquired in China a few years ago. The business has struggled of late, due to a slowing economy and the end of China’s stimulus program.

At the same time, however, China still holds considerable opportunity. The country has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest smartphone market. Of the top five smartphone vendors in the world, two — Huawei and ZTE — are Chinese firms selling smartphones mostly in their home country.

With Five Star, Best Buy seems uniquely positioned to benefit from this growth. Although the company has shut down its big-box stores in China, Best Buy has continued to open Five Star stores and is testing a Best Buy Mobile store-within-a-store concept in some Five Star locations.

“Shari and I recently traveled to China and Canada, meeting with the new business leaders there and spending time in our stores,” Joly wrote in his memo to employees. “I am encouraged by the progress we are making and look forward to continuing to work closely with Shari and our country leaders.”

In May, Best Buy named Meng “Max” Zhou, a longtime retail executive in Asia, as its new China CEO. Still, Wall Street continues to doubt Best Buy’s future in that country with some analysts speculating that the company hired Zhou as a type of caretaker to prepare Five Star for a sale.

Of China and Canada, it makes more sense for Best Buy to stay in the latter, said David Strasser, a retail analyst with Janney Capital Management. Canada’s stores are profitable, and many of Joly’s strategies toward fixing U.S. retail can also apply north of the border, he said.

“Canada was always going to be a part of Best Buy,” Strasser said. “It’s a legitimate and good part of the business.”

China, however, is a different animal, Strasser said. The country has not yet generated the necessary returns to justify Best Buy’s continued presence there, he said.

“I still believe China is a question mark,” Strasser said. “Over time, China will either work itself out or it won’t.”

Joly, though, seems like he wants to remain in China — at least for the immediate future. Earlier this summer, Joly visited China and Canada, Best Buy spokesman Matt Furman said.

“He is personally engaged in our international business,” Furman said.

In the memo, Joly revealed that Carol Surface, the current HR chief, is leaving Best Buy to join an undisclosed Minnesota company. Joly also sought to refute the idea that appointing Ballard to run human resources would somehow detract from her duties as international chief.

“To be clear, Shari also remains responsible for our international business,” Joly said. “The addition of HR to Shari’s responsibilities does not, in any way, diminish what is expected of her as President, International.”

That might seem a lot of work for one executive but it fits Joly’s preference for a lean, efficient management structure. For example, Chief Financial Officer Sharon McCollam also is chief administrative officer charged with revamping Best Buy’s supply chain operations and real estate portfolio.

In addition, the sale of Best Buy Europe and the appointment of Zhou will help ease the burden on Ballard, a company veteran who formerly led human resources and served as co-head of North American retail.

“I think she is competent, a good executive,” Strasser said.

A bosses’ ploy to hold down wages, unions say

The plan to import 330 labourers for the Mai Po railway tunnel has come under fire by the unions who charge that the move would help bosses suppress the wages of local workers.

The Labour Department recently approved an application by the contractors of the high-speed rail link between West Kowloon and Shenzhen to bring in 330 people who have been working on the mainland section of the line to fill the job vacancies.

The chief executive of the Confederation of Trade Unions Mung Siu-tat said the “so-called” vacancies were created by the contractors suppressing the wages for the jobs.

“The job vacancy was such a lie,” said Mung, adding that data from the Census and Statistics Department showed the unemployment rate in the construction industry was 6 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, which was almost double the city’s overall unemployment rate of 3.4 per cent.

A department spokesman said the government would consult relevant unions before it decided whether or not to approve the import of non-local workers.

But Mung said his union was not consulted or informed until the authority officially approved the plan earlier this month.

Another unionist said the contractors had failed to recruit local workers for the project because they were offering a salary much lower than the average rate in Hong Kong.

Wong Wai-man, chairman of the Bar-bending Industry Workers Solidarity Union said employers were offering bar benders and steel fixers HK$1,076 a day, which is about 30 per cent less than the average of HK$1,514.

Wong said he was worried that importing the non-local workers would create a vicious cycle in the industry.

“The wages will stay low. Young people will then be reluctant to become a construction worker. In the end there will seem to be more job vacancies, and the employers will have more excuses to import workers.”

Shanghai’s free trade zone trial gets official go-ahead

China has officially given the green light to setting up a pilot free trade zone in Shanghai, the Ministry of Commerce said yesterday, and an overall plan for the zone will be announced after legal procedures are completed.

“The State Council has proposed to adjust some laws in the free trade zone in an effort to accelerate transition of government functions, explore management of foreign investment through drafting a negative list for foreign investors, and seek innovation in the opening-up model,” according to a ministry statement.

The proposal is pending approval from the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.

“The free zone will benefit China with new advantages in international competition and provide a new platform for the country to cooperate with other countries and thus help it to explore economic potential and build an upgrading economy,” the statement said.

China plans to suspend some laws on foreign companies and joint ventures in free trade zones, including Shanghai, according to a statement released after a meeting presided over by Premier Li Keqiang on August 16.

The central government approved a draft plan in July, which involves further opening up the country’s service sector, speeding up transformation of trading methods, promoting openness and innovation in the financial sector and building a suitable regulatory system for the zone.

In a free trade zone, goods can be imported, manufactured and re-exported without the intervention of Customs authorities, thus improving convenience and efficiency and facilitating the free flow of commodities and capital.

Shanghai’s current bonded areas allow companies to import goods without paying tax unless they enter the Chinese mainland for sale in the domestic market.

The pilot free trade zone, the first of its kind on the Chinese mainland, will be in the Pudong New Area.

The 28.78 square kilometer area will cover Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, Waigaoqiao Bonded Logistic Zone, Yangshan Free Trade Port Area and Pudong Airport Comprehensive Free Trade Zone, where a series of preferential policies is already in place.

The Shanghai Financial Services Office said the trial will focus on facilitating trade and investment activities, promotion of cross-border yuan use, and decentralization and improvement of foreign exchange management.

The trial program and implementation will be designed with Shanghai’s own characteristics to pilot China’s new financial reform, opening up and innovation measures, the office said.

Some measures to be implemented in the trial are related to credit asset securitization and foreign direct investment by individuals.

Sun Lijian, head of the Finance Research Center at Fudan University, said: “The approval of the trial free trade zone in Shanghai indicates the government’s resolution to rebalance economic development from a government-led and policy-supported pattern to a deregulated and more market-oriented mode.”

Lu Zhengwei, chief economist with the Industrial Bank, said that building a free trade zone that follows international standards is expected to bring breakthroughs to China’s service industry, which is set to be a new engine for the Chinese economy over the next decade.

5 Eye-Popping Numbers Behind China’s Rise

China’s a big place. The world’s most populous country and second-largest economy has become a global star, ranking as the hottest emerging market and an investor target for growth, while previous top economies such as the U.S. and Europe have slowly staggered back from the recession. In China, the present is only part of the story: Growth investors have their eyes trained firmly on this nation’s massive opportunity in the future.

But just how big is that opportunity? Let’s look at five numbers that sum up China’s present and future — and just how this king of the emerging markets shapes up for investors everywhere.

1. 1.4 billion
China boasts around 1.35 billion people under its flag today, but Thomson Reuters estimates that the country’s population will only increase to around 1.4 billion by 2050. This is a country looking at a low-growth environment over the next 35 years as it modernizes and urbanizes — and it signals a major shift on how investors should look at this emerging market.

For decades, China has translated its massive population’s burgeoning potential into double-digit annual economic growth. China’s slowdown today is coming as the country faces a pair of demographic challenges that will probably prevent China from achieving its old, eye-popping annualized growth rates again. Indeed, many economists project that India will surpass China as the world’s most populous country before then.

Beijing’s one-child policy has gutted China’s youth, leaving a swelling senior population too heavily reliant on a thin corps of young, productive workers. Thomson Reuters projects that more than 20% of China’s population will be above age 65 by 2040, with that percentage growing even higher by 2050. Beijing will be forced to allot more attention and funds away from its current resource-oriented strategy — one that has given rise to massive state-owned corporations, with many of the largest listed on American markets — and toward services that can care for its elderly and increase the efficiency of its smaller working class.

Combined with a national birth trend that sees more than 120 boys born for every 100 girls — one of the highest such ratios among top economies in the world — China will be hard-pressed to bolster its youth population in the next few decades. But while that will hit the country’s long-term growth rates, China does have other statistics firmly in its favor.

2. 651.3 million
China had an estimated rural population of 651.3 million people in 2012, according to figures from the World Bank. That’s as many people as the populations of the United States, Russia, Japan, and France combined all living in China’s rural fringes that, for the most part, haven’t caught up with the country’s advances in recent decades.

Urbanization has fueled China’s growth, as some of the country’s largest cities, from Shanghai to Wuhan, have grown into metropolises large and tall enough to rival America and Europe’s biggest cities. As more and more Chinese citizens have flocked to the cities, companies both domestic and foreign have tapped into this source of new, cheap labor as a means to reduce manufacturing costs and boost their balance sheets.

But the face of China’s urbanization is changing. The cheap “made-in-China” era is coming to an end as labor costs rise and companies look for cheaper means of production. Increasingly, China’s leading companies of the future will need to tap into the nation’s growing urban population not as a source of labor, but as a massive consumer market unrivaled on a global stage. This strategy’s already paid off in a big way for international leaders in the auto industry that have tapped into China’s burgeoning auto market as the revenue base of the future.

Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM ) is one company that’s already hitched its wagon to China’s urban potential, for better or worse: Yum!’s KFC and Pizza Hut brands have thrived in China’s market, but a 13% year-over-year same-store sales decline in July hammered the stock recently. Consumer stock investors should expect more hits and misses as companies look to cater to this lucrative market in the years to come.

3. 624 million
Not every industry is still emerging in China, however: The materials industry has come to be dominated by China lately, as exemplified by the 624 million tonnes of steel the nation used in 2011 alone. That was more than six times the amount of steel that the U.S., the second-place nation, used — and China further beat a second-place America six times over in steel production for 2011.

It’s a symbol of how China’s investment in its growing nation has fueled its global ambitions — and also a sign of how those ambitions can be a poison for investors. A caustic mix of oversupply and weak demand in the steel industry has taken down America and Europe’s top steelmakers, which have ceded the lead in the industry to China’s state-run behemoths, such as Wuhan Iron and Steel.

Wuhan’s stock has suffered as a result, but the contagion has plagued former titans of the industry. China’s quest to lead materials industries, combined with the general economic slowdown in the wake of the recession, has led to lean times in the materials sector. U.S. Steel (NYSE: X ) in particular has seen its stock fall more than 40% over the past two years, and the company’s earnings have turned into the red for the past three fiscal years. Beijing has ramped down production across its state-run companies this year as a result of its slowdown, but China’s materials giants are still dominating this hard-hit sector.

Aluminum and other industries have fared just as poorly, as oversupply has forced factory closures and worse. It’s just one way that bigger isn’t always better for investors in China.

4. 44%
Forty-four percent isn’t even a majority, but it’s a huge number when dealing with a population like China’s. That’s the percentage of Chinese citizens on the Internet as of the end of June, according to the Chinese Internet Network Information Center. It’s an amount that adds up to 591 million people, more than the populations of the U.S. and Indonesia combined and a gain of 27 million Web-linked Chinese citizens since just the end of last year.

Out of all the industries standing to benefit from China’s growth, Internet companies may top the list. China’s increasing urbanization will only lead to more citizens on the Web, but Beijing’s restrictive Internet regulation has prevented many U.S. or other international companies from establishing a strong base in the country.

That’s led to a huge opportunity for Chinese search engine king Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU ) and other Chinese companies that have quickly filled the Internet vacuum. Baidu’s not only captured a majority of the Chinese search-engine market in its young life, but it’s also established itself as a dominant force to come by pushing hard into the mobile market. Mobile revenue made up more than 10% of Baidu’s total revenue last quarter, a first for the company. China’s mobile market stood at 420 million users at the end of last year, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, and Baidu’s opportunity here is enormous.

5. 8.7 million
The auto market has exploded in China, and the 8.7 million passenger cars sold in the first six months of 2013 is a staggering amount. Even more eye-popping: That figure represented a 13.8% year-over-year gain, showing that the Chinese auto market’s only getting started in the country’s growing urban and middle-class segments.

Just how large is that number? America’s auto industry has bounced back well this year, and even that success has rewarded automakers with only 7.8 million American auto sales over the year’s first half. And that push came from the built-up demand caused by the advanced age of the average car on U.S. roads. China’s appetite for cars should only continue to increase its lead on all rivals.

The world’s leading automakers have taken notice. China has become Volkswagen’s (NASDAQOTH: VLKAY ) largest market, as the German auto king has soared to take the No. 1 spot there. Consequently, Europe’s slump hasn’t hit VW anywhere nearly as much as it’s affected fellow European companies, as VW’s stock has roared higher by more than 45% over the past year.

Even Detroit’s finest companies have turned to China for their bread and butter, as China recently became General Motors’ (NYSE: GM ) top market as well. GM’s behind only Volkswagen in China, and strong sales on the other side of the Pacific helped the company’s overall sales climb 4% over the first half of the year. For auto investors and China investors alike, the Chinese auto market is one industry you can’t afford to take your eyes off.

Making money on China’s rise
China’s a huge, growing, and valuable market; there’s no other way to say it. The country’s growth from a minor power in Asia to one of the world’s economic powerbrokers has been nothing short of astounding over the past few decades. While some areas in China still need much work to thrive — the materials sector, the country’s weak transportation infrastructure, and the economy’s housing struggles are notable examples — China’s in it for the long run.

Investors can’t just throw money around in a nation that’s still finding its feet, but by sticking to the basics, investing in great, solid companies, and buying for the long term, you might just make the most of China’s rise.

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51job print job ads fall by half in China as demand drops

Chinese recruitment services group 51job, one of the country’s fastest growing companies, is seeing demand for print advertising dropping substantially.

The firm’s results for the second quarter of 2013 show print revenues down 50% to RMB11m (£1.15m) compared with Q2 2012, with the estimated number of print advertising pages it generated in 2012 declining 47% to 355.

51job says it has taken a “strategic decision to discontinue certain newspaper editions”, thus reducing the number of cities where its supplement 51job Weekly is distributed to five – half the number of cities covered in the same period last year.

In Q2 2012, print had made up more than 6% of the group’s revenue. As revenue has grown, this figure is now less than 3%.

Group-wide revenues of RMB404.4m grew by 12%, with online recruitment, representing two-thirds of the business, growing slightly above that rate.

The firm’s president and chief executive officer Rick Yan says: “Recent feedback we have received from enterprises continues to be favourable regarding their hiring plans for white-collar workers.

“We remain optimistic about market outlook as we focus on strategy execution and capturing opportunities in the evolving HR services industry in China.”

See next week’s August edition of Recruiter for the Global Spotlight on China, and stay tuned for more online on recruiter.co.uk, including thoughts from Totaljobs director Mike Booker, also the managing director of global job site alliance The Network.

Foxconn on mass recruitment in China, puts ‘robot’ plan in question

Foxconn reportedly is looking to recruit more than 90,000 workers for its Shenzhen factory, putting more question marks on the company’s previous plan to deploy 1 million robots by 2014.

According to a Yi Cai report Friday, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer is beefing up its pool of skilled workers. It cited a staff at Foxconn’s Shenzhen recruitment center who declined to be named: “We are keeping things very low-key during this recruitment drive.”

The latest development follows another massive recruitment exercise for its inland factory in Zhengzhou earlier this year, which seems to contradict Foxconn CEO Guo Taiming’s plan to replace manpower by installing 1 million robots across its factories.

“There are huge hurdles if Foxconn wants to push forward its 1 million robot plan,” a robotics technology provider for Foxconn noted in the Yi Cai report. He estimated Foxconn probably installed fewer than 100,000 robotic pieces since Guo shared his vision for factory automation in 2011, with plans to increase the company’s robot count by 100-fold from 10,000 to 1 million by 2014.

The source from Foxconn said the company needed more time to push forward the automation process and, for the time being, would choose the comparatively cheap labor in mainland China as its first choice.

Premier encourages students to find work in western China

Premier Li Keqiang told new graduates to be enterprising and innovative in hunting for jobs in what some say is the toughest time for them to find work in recent years.

At Lanzhou University in Gansu province on Sunday, Li assured students that the government will spare no effort in helping them succeed in the difficult job market.

“Young people should be resolute and brave to start their own businesses. By doing so, you create jobs not only for yourselves but also for many others,” Li said when he met a crowd of students. “Confidence and enterprising spirit are your biggest assets.”

Li said he’s been inspired to know that some graduates from the university have taken the initiative in shouldering social responsibility by setting up their own businesses.

Huang Zheng, a 25-year-old graduate, told the premier he has just given up a job offer in administrative management in Guangzhou to set up an Internet company in Lanzhou that will help local students find jobs.

Huang said by doing so he could follow his passion and hone his skills in the real business world.

“You’ve made a good choice,” Li told Huang. “Don’t be afraid of failure.”

However, Huang told China Daily that he now lacks capital and resources and he hopes the government can help.

Under the incentive policy for new graduates who are setting up enterprises, entrepreneurs can receive a two-year tax waiver.

“But we still need about 300,000 yuan ($49,000) start-up capital,” Huang said. “We’re applying to set up our company in the local venture industrial park so that we can have a free office site.”

Venture capital and social resources are harder to come by in a western city, he said, than in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai.

During his visit to the university, Li urged students to be confident in the job market.

This year might be the toughest time for college graduates to enter the workforce in recent years. A record 6.99 million students are leaving universities in summer, a 2.8 percent increase, to hunt for jobs at a time when employers are cutting back on recruitment due to a slowing economy, according to the Ministry of Education.

“Though the number of graduates is huge, the unemployment rate (in China) is still low compared with some developed economies,” Li said.

“Young talent is the future of the nation, and the government will try every way possible to help them.”

The premier also encouraged students to work in western and remote areas of China, as the western region has become a growth engine for the country, but it still lacks innovation and talent.

In 2012, the region’s GDP increased by 12.5 percent year-on-year, much faster than in the eastern and central parts of the country.

To help graduates find jobs, the State Council has called for the implementation of existing policies favorable to graduates’ employment.

The central government has also encouraged graduates to turn toward self-employment and start their own businesses, promising to provide training subsidies, small loans, tax breaks and other incentives.

However, setting up businesses might not be easy. “Starting up a company is challenging for fresh graduates as they have no social experience or capital,” said Chen Yu, deputy director of China Association of Employment Promotion.

Entrepreneurs on average are between 35 and 44 years old when they launch their companies, according to a report on entrepreneurship released by the management committee of Zhongguancun, China’s Silicon Valley. It said lack of access to capital and experience are strong barriers for young entrepreneurs.

“When jobs are unavailable, new graduates may have to create opportunities by themselves,” Chen said. “But this is difficult for many because it is not what they have been trained to do.”

He said traditional education teaches students how to perform a job that already exists, but fails to encourage broad and creative thinking.

Market open for bilingual job seekers

Zhang Daojian, vice-president of the Confucius Institute in Islamabad, said he has had numerous requests over the past year from Chinese businesses that want to hire local Mandarin-speaking students.

“Studying Chinese is a great help to Pakistani students because many Chinese companies here want to hire people who can speak English, Urdu and Mandarin,” Zhang said.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan, and both Urdu and English are the official languages.

“Last year a Chinese company asked me to recruit such talent, and I apologized because we had no students available,” said Zhang, a former teacher at Beijing Language and Culture University. The university established the Confucius Institute in Islamabad in 2007.

Zhang said some of the students who are fluent in Mandarin went to China for further studies, and the rest were hired in Pakistan.

“Generally, their jobs are really good, and most of them are working in banking or for leading Chinese enterprises,” he said.

The Confucius Institute gave Mandarin lessons to 6,000 students in 2012 amid the nationwide drive to learn the language.
“Mandarin lessons are compulsory in the leading elementary schools here,” Zhang said.

The Confucius Institute also co-hosted a series of cultural events to boost public diplomacy. One such event last year impressed Zhang with the Pakistani public’s enthusiasm for Chinese culture.

Local enthusiasm

“We participated in a cuisine festival last year, and China’s booth attracted many people.

The traditional friendship between the two neighbors is one of the reasons Pakistanis want to learn Chinese, he said.

“Economic, political and cultural exchanges are frequent between the two countries, which naturally provides a major boost to the demand for learning Mandarin.”

Traditional Chinese culture also appeals a lot to the local people, Zhang added.

Although Pakistanis have a strong desire to learn Chinese, Zhang said maintaining that enthusiasm is difficult.

“Some students have been brought up in well-off families, and they went to Britain or the United States for further studies after abruptly ending their Mandarin lessons,” he said.

Others who get posts at branches of Chinese companies in Pakistan are not interested in furthering their studies, Zhang added.

Security concerns

The security situation in Pakistan also is a concern, Zhang said. The media seldom reports good news about Pakistan, and the country has been depicted as being overwhelmed by bombings and earthquakes, he added.

One recent explosion several kilometers from the institute killed more than 20 people.

One of the institute’s teachers was giving lessons near the site of the bombing, but no one with the institute was hurt.

The security issue is a concern for some teachers from Beijing before they leave for Islamabad, Zhang said.

But the situation in Islamabad is relatively safe compared with elsewhere in the country, and one will be all right if he or she takes precautions, he said.

No Chinese teacher may leave Islamabad without Zhang’s permission, and he suggests that they finish their shopping early in the morning.

“I told them to leave at 7:30 am to buy fruits and vegetables and ensure they return before 8:30 am. The fewer people there are on the streets, the safer it is.”