Archives 2007

Chief of Sales and Marketing

Location: Chang Zhou
Tasks:

1. Coordination of the sales activities of all strategic units for China with local sales agency and regional sales force
2. Coordination, conception and realization of sales supporting measures (fairs, promotion, training)
3. Consultation of the board and heads of Strategic Units concerning formulation and implementation of sale strategy (e.g. pricing)
4. Cooperation with other business units, for example service, production, development
5. Support of key account customers
6. Market observation, methodical market analysis
7. Report to local management and heads of strategic units
8. Organization of local sales structures

Requirements:
1. Commercial or technical education
2. Longtime experience in sales, preferably in producer durable goods
3. Experience in the Asiatic marker, ideally in the textile market
4. Profound knowledge of the instruments of sales policy
5. Good command of English and Chinese
6. Ability to communicate, analytical skills
7. Negotiating skills
8. Willingness to travel and to relocate

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to:
‘topjob_mkt194cz#dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)

China Job market faces challenges

Source: China Daily
The employment market will remain gloomy for “a considerably long term”, with as many as 12 million workers struggling to find a job every year, according to a report released by the labor authority yesterday.

It is estimated that 65 percent of the population will be of working age in the coming 20 years as the children of the baby boom generation of the 1960s and 1970s enter the job market, said the report by the Ministry of Labor and Social Securities (MLSS).

Half of the 24 million people who enter the job market every year will not immediately be able to find work, despite the rapid growth of the country’s gross domestic product, which is expected to create about 10 million new jobs every year until 2010, said the report.

The employment outlook is further clouded by the 120 million rural workers expected to remain idle in the countryside, said the report.

Despite the apparent over-supply in the labor pool, the MLSS also stressed in its report that labor shortages have hit factories in some prosperous regions.

The annual 5 percent increase in the number of migrant workers, a major factor in the fast pace of urbanization in recent years, has failed to keep pace with the annual growth in demand for workers, which has expanded by about 10 to 15 percent a year since 2003, said the report.

As a result, about 45 percent of the enterprises in the Pearl River Delta and 34 percent in the Yangtze River Delta polled by MLSS said they did not have enough workers last spring.

Meanwhile, the migrants’ growing awareness of their legal and economic rights has also contributed to the shortage.

About half of the migrants surveyed by the MLSS said they would be willing to quit their jobs because of “low pay”.

The lack of professional training is another factor in the shortage, said the report.

The report cited a survey by the MLSS earlier this year which found that 37 percent of all new jobs required a medium level of skills, but only 13 percent of migrant workers had received formal job training.

The ministry called for better working environments for workers as well as improved training programs.

While painting a dismal picture of the employment market, the report also sought to dispel fears raised by reports that China’s labor supply would dry up by 2010.

A report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences last month forecast that the family planning policy had helped slow the growth of the population.

This indicates that China would be “moving from an era of labor surpluses into an era of labor shortages.”

China’s software power

It’s a brave new world for China’s software firms as they come of age

WHY China? Even two years ago, Ben Wang had to answer the question every time he tried a sales pitch for software service contracts from overseas clients.

These days, instead of answering the question, Wang asks the questions as he meets executives from scores of companies every month, all keen to outsource software work to his company.

“China is becoming a top destination for software outsourcing,” says Wang, CEO of Beijing-based Beyondsoft Co Ltd. His company, started in 1995 with only four people, now has an army of 2,000 engineers, providing outsourcing services for tech giants such as Microsoft and IBM.

China’s fledgling outsourcing companies are now expanding rapidly, trying to woo multinationals scouting for low-cost information technology (IT) talent. By trying to pry open the US market, they now aim to become international players like their successful counterparts in India.

But they are not the only ones driving China’s IT outsourcing dreams. Leading IT services companies such as US-based EDS and India’s Satyam have mapped out aggressive expansion plans in the nation. Some are even looking at acquiring local players to speed up the process.

“It’s a critical time for Chinese outsourcing companies,” says Wang.

“We will either grow into giants or will be gobbled up by a giant.”

Unlike their Indian cousins, Chinese outsourcing companies usually made their first millions in Japan rather than Western countries like Britain and the US.

In 2006, China’s software outsourcing companies raked in US$1.4bil in revenues, up more than 40% compared with a year earlier.

And 60% of this revenue came from the Japanese market.

Yet, compared with the US and Europe, the Japanese market is still a small pie. According to IT consultancy IDC, North American and European markets accounted for 75% of the world’s US$320bil IT service and outsourcing market. And these two markets are expected to expand more than 60% annually in the coming years, almost twice the speed of the Japanese market.

With the US market firmly in their sights, Chinese outsourcing companies have kicked off an acquisition spree, trying to gain access to it.

In March this year, Beijing-headquartered hiSoft Technology International bought out Envisage Solutions, a California-based IT consulting firm that boasts a client base of biggies such as Novell and General Electric.

Despite their ambition to go global, Chinese outsourcing companies are facing increasing competition in the neighbourhood. As salaries for software engineers keep rising in India, the world’s leading outsourcing giants are now eyeing China’s universities as the new sources of low-cost software talent.

Tata Consultancy Services, one of India’s most powerful IT outfits, established a new outsourcing joint venture in Beijing with Microsoft and two Chinese partners this February.

The company expects the venture to increase its headcount in China tenfold to 5,000 by 2010, and help it become one of the biggest players in China.

Two months later, India’s fourth largest software exporter Satyam kicked off a global delivery campus in Nanjing, capital of East China’s Jiangsu Province as part of its efforts to increase its number of engineers to more than 3,000 by 2008.

“The labour cost in China could be 15% to 20% lower than India’s,” Satyam chief executive officer Rama Raju said during the opening ceremony of the Nanjing centre.

“Besides organic growth, we are also studying the possibility of acquiring local companies to speed up our expansion.”

Top-Ranked U.S. Business School Offers Entrepreneurial Immersion Trip to China

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, ranked #1 in the latest business school ranking by Business Week, is offering an entrepreneurial immersion trip to China August 26 to September 4, 2007.

(PRWEB) June 18, 2007 — The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, ranked #1 in the latest business school ranking by Business Week, is offering an entrepreneurial immersion trip to China August 26 to September 4, 2007. (http://ChicagoGSB.edu/entrepreneurship/immersion).

“The trip will help facilitate meaningful business networking and help novice entrepreneurs overcome some of the major obstacles to doing business in China,” said Linda Darragh, director of entrepreneurship programs at Chicago GSB. The obstacles include cultural norms, business regulations and processes, financial practices, language issues and transportation, she said.

The trip, offered by the school’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship (http://ChicagoGSB.edu/entrepreneurship), will also familiarize participants with key cities in China including Dalian, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau. Participants will learn from U.S. companies already operating in China, meet with Chinese government officials and U.S. trade directors, and network with Chinese entrepreneurs and investors.

The trip also includes a tour of Chinese entrepreneurial companies to learn the benefits and challenges of working with local partners in China, and a visit to a major research park to understand incubation strategies offered to Chinese entrepreneurs by local economic development organizations.

A signature event of the trip is a visit to the Shanghai Knowledge and Innovation Community, where high-tech entrepreneurs, educators, researchers, and venture capitalists will meet, network and work together. The facility, now under construction, is scheduled for completion in 2010. Vincent Lo, developer of the facility and one of the leading entrepreneurs in China, will speak to participants.

Chicago GSB has been teaching courses in Asia since 2000 when the school opened a permanent campus in Singapore for its Executive MBA Program (http://www.chicagogsb.edu/execmea/index.aspx).

For more information about the entrepreneurial immersion trip to China, or to register, contact Linda Darragh at 773-702-9108 or by e-mail.

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business is one of the oldest and largest business schools in the world. The school’s faculty includes many renowned scholars and its graduates include many business leaders across the U.S. and worldwide. The Chicago Approach to Management Education is distinguished by how it leverages fundamental knowledge, its rigor, and its practical application to business challenges.

Chicago GSB offers full-time and part-time MBA programs, a PhD program, open enrollment executive education, and custom corporate education. The school has campuses in London and Singapore in addition to two campuses in Chicago. More information about Chicago GSB can be found at http://ChicagoGSB.edu.

Motorola CIO on recruiting, retaining talent in china

Motorola CIO Patricia Morrison talks about recruiting and retaining talent in the global marketplace, innovation in IT and developing a process for integrating acquisitions.

Four of the five business unit CIOs who work for you are women. How do you happen to have so many women in top IT positions at Motorola?

In a couple of cases, they were promoted, and in others, they were hired from the outside. When you have an opening, you make sure you have a diversity of candidates, in gender, experience and other ways.

Given all the concerns in the industry about attracting women to IT, would you personally choose a woman for a job if all other variables were roughly equal?

I don’t think that way. It’s valuable to have diversity in my team — not so much to have a woman. I consider what will make my team better. That can include personality. One of my CIOs brings consumer products experience into my team. One had supply chain experience and brought an engineering perspective. One of my CIOs has a Ph.D. in art history and was a curator at [New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art]. So it’s really looking at all the unique things that people bring.

How can companies attract young women to a career in IT?

It’s not unique to women, but it’s a problem, if you are talking about getting kids into the IT profession from an educational standpoint. There’s a lot in the media about outsourcing, and that gives misimpressions about the IT opportunity. That’s one dynamic that’s making people gravitate away from IT as a profession.

I recently had lunch with a group of female engineering students and asked what interested them in the engineering profession. It was a consistent view that the No. 1 thing to motivate them was their fathers. So there’s got to be a feeling of confidence when you come into a difficult profession, whether it is engineering or IT. That confidence is very important.

You mean their fathers instilled in them a sense of confidence?

Yes, because IT is hard — not that business isn’t hard or nursing isn’t hard. Confidence is a leadership quality. What the profession is about is problem-solving. It’s not about computation so much; it’s not only about programming, but about solving problems. Some of them are big, hairy business problems you are solving. Some are usability problems for products. There’s a lot of art and finesse that we don’t talk about when we try to attract women to the profession.

Is IT worker retention a concern for you?

We talk about retaining people every month in my operating reviews in China and India. In those regions, there’s a lot of job-shopping going on, so much that it reminds me of the heyday of the IT bubble, where people changed jobs every two months. For our growth and what we’re doing at Motorola in those regions, we need leaders on the ground and in IT. We need to support the growth of R&D, and we need to be where the work is. It’s very important, but it’s hard to retain them.

Any ideas on how to deal with that?

We don’t really know yet. It’s an emerging trend. We know that what motivates IT people is, “Does my customer really appreciate my work?” But how did we get to the point where we train a person and suddenly they go down the street for 20 percent to 30 percent increases in pay? It’s the nature of the markets there right now.

You have a strong education background in music and math. What do those have to do with preparation for IT work?

Music programs in schools are critical. I studied music and was a math major in college. I’m actually a right-brained person with a holistic way of looking at things. Music study tends to make you think differently about how things work together, whether orchestra, choral or theater. You learn it’s not the individual that makes the outcome, but it’s all the things working in harmony. That’s like running a project in IT or business.

How is IT at Motorola influencing the development of the company’s products?

Innovation comes from solving real customer problems. We use our own products, and we have a pretty significant impact on product development. Almost 6,000 Motorola Q handhelds have been adopted in our IT [operations] because it is an enterprise device with 23 apps running on it.

What handheld device do you use?

I use a 3G Q, announced recently. I use it for e-mail and voice and for everything. As a matter of fact, I rely less and less on my laptop. I would take a laptop if I were doing a big Word document or a spreadsheet, but I’m not a big spreadsheet junkie. I have to tell you, I don’t see a lot of need to have a laptop. I travel about 60 percent of the time all over the world. [The handheld] works in all the networks around the world, but not Japan, which is unique. But I can get applications on the Q and can deploy to the Q anything I can move through our mobile portals. I can do approvals for workflow and see my reports. I can do a NetMeeting live on a Q. The BlackBerry is a fabulous e-mail device, but there’s a lot I can’t do on it.

How is the integration work going following the recent acquisitions of Good Technology and Symbol Technologies?

I’m intimately involved with that. We’ve started to create a repeatable process for integrating companies. For example, with Symbol, you do basic things right away, like HR integration and setting up e-mail and Internet. For things like product portfolio integration and order-taking integration, we’ve started using business process management tools to create dialogue around where the processes of the two companies intersect and how to create revenue synergy. That has gone really well. BPM has been very helpful. We’ve also learned it doesn’t pay to just rip out one of the ERP systems of the two companies being merged. We use parts of both ERP systems.

What does Motorola do best, and what does it most need to improve upon?

I really think having innovation at the core of the culture here is very powerful for Motorola. You see it everywhere you go, in every function, and not just R&D. It’s an empowering environment to work in. [CEO] Ed Zander has made Motorola exciting and fast-paced, and it permeates the culture. If you talk to people who’ve been here a long time, they see an enormous difference.

In terms of improvements, the thing that makes me most crazy is the big company bureaucracy, which is not unique to Motorola. Sometimes IT people want to control everything for good reasons, such as securing company information. But the company also faces tough competing demands, especially in the consumer market. So my challenge is solving the bureaucracy and finding ways to free it up.

Material Manager – a famous international technology corporation

Company introduction:
Our client company is an international technology corporation that serves customers in kinds of selected industrial sectors. It has production on all continents and has business operations in over 50 countries. It is one of the world’s largest supplier of automation solutions. The Client¡¯s long-term goal is to become the industry benchmark. It strives for world-class operational excellence and continuously develops ways to enhance customer satisfaction. With the values of customer¡¯s success, profitable innovation, personal commitment and professional development, the company will take root in China and welcome more talents to join in.

Location:shanghai

Responsibilities:
1.To be responsible for procurement management to ensure all the parts on time delivery for production needs;
2.To be responsible for production planning management to ensure the on time completion of production.
3.To control parts inventory to a reasonable level.
4.To communicate with supplier about forecast, supplier performance, quality to ensure the required supplier performance;
5.To source and update local suppliers network in China to meet the capacity and quality demand in a cost efficient way
6.To audit suppliers regularly and maintain development discussions
7.Supervision & coaching team consisting of buyers and production planners
8.Reporting to Plant Manager

Requirements:
1.University degree with major in Mechanical Engineering.
2.Min 8 years procurement and production planning working experience in foreign company
3.At least 3-4 years management experience
4.ERP experience e.g. MFGPRO
5.Good command of English communication skills
6.Open minded and team player
7.Be able to work under pressure

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to:
‘topjob_mn165sh#dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)

Keeping China’s best and brightest at home

By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG – As Western countries worry over China’s rise on the international stage, they hold a key advantage in the competition for power and influence: many of China’s best and brightest go abroad for a university education, enjoy their lives in the West, and never return home to share their knowledge and expertise with the motherland.

A recent study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the nation’s top think-tank, shows that China is losing more first-rate minds to the West than any other country in the world. The phenomenon amounts to a new form of colonialism in which Western countries exploit intellectual talent rather than raw materials.

China is not the only victim of this international form of brain-picking, but it tops the list. More than 70% of the Chinese students who go abroad to study don’t return home, according to the study. Of the 1.06 million Chinese who have traveled overseas to study since 1978, CASS found that only 275,000 have returned.

And despite torrid economic growth of nearly 10% for the past three decades, the problem does not seem to be getting any better. In 2005, 118,500 students left China for study abroad. By 2010, 200,000 are expected to enroll in foreign universities.

All told, according to CASS, the Chinese diaspora holds 35 million people scattered in more than 150 countries, making China the world’s largest source of emigrants.

Yang Xiaojing, one of the authors of the study, was pleased by the international competitiveness of Chinese students but worried about the country’s future if the brain drain continues.

“This shows that Chinese students overseas, especially those with extraordinary abilities, are a real hit in the global tug-of-war for talent,” he told the state-run China Daily. “While strictly controlling the inflow of foreign labor to protect the interests of [their] domestic workforce, most developed countries spare no effort to attract the best talent from around the world.”

Yang added this warning: “Against a backdrop of economic globalization, an excessive brain drain will inevitably threaten the human-resources security and eventually the national economic and social security of any country.”

Previously, Beijing had embraced the concept of “brain circulation”. The aim was for students to study in the West and then bring back their expertise to China for the advancement of the motherland. In addition, emigration reduced competition in the job market, which is cutthroat for university graduates in China, and brain drain seemed of no great consequence in a country where last week 10 million students sat the annual university entrance exam. Emigration also brings US$20 billion in annual remittances to the country from Chinese living overseas, according to a 2006 United Nations report.

But with seven of every 10 students remaining abroad while China suffers from a dearth of expertise in important sectors of the economy, the thinking in Beijing has changed. Now the government is offering incentives for students and professionals to return. Issued in March, these include exempting professionals in undermanned fields – science, engineering, and corporate management stand out – from the burdensome hukou (house registration) system, which can limit where a person lives and works.

Low-interest loans and higher salaries are also being offered to returnees, as well as coveted places for their children in the country’s most prestigious universities. The Ministry of Personnel has even called for “a talent security alarm system” to monitor emigration.

Meanwhile, the diaspora continues to expand. What will it take to persuade those who are potentially some of China’s best and brightest stars to come home?

“Of the many reasons for the brain drain of Chinese students,” the CASS study said, “huge social and economic gaps in terms of personal income, employment opportunities, working conditions, research facilities and living standards are the main ones.”

Put plainly, talented graduates can make a lot more money outside China, enjoy a better work environment, avoid rampant corruption, and plan a family without worrying about the one-child policy.

Emigrants must also be daunted by the unemployment rate for university graduates in China. Since 2002, it has averaged 30%. Part of the problem is the education system itself, which has been unable to keep up with the rapidly changing needs of Chinese society. There is a shortage of qualified faculty and courses in finance, management, information technology and other fields that are in growing demand in the booming Chinese economy. At the same time, there are far too many graduates in the humanities and social sciences who battle for jobs in a glutted market.

The potential for social unrest among unemployed students rightly worries the Chinese leadership. Those worries must have been heightened last week when a riot ensued after a female student was beaten by city inspectors for illegally selling fashion accessories on a street in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. The rioters were mostly other students from different universities in Zhengzhou.

The Zhengzhou incident is a painful reminder that the Chinese educational system is caught in a difficult catch-up game with the country’s runaway economy. It is no wonder that gifted students opt to go abroad and that, once there, many choose not to return.

Despite the large numbers, however, the Chinese emigration problem pales when compared in percentages with places in the developing world. World Bank figures show that a quarter to half of university-educated professionals in the world’s poorest countries live abroad, and the figure is as high as 80% in Haiti and Jamaica.
The brain drain is particularly acute in Africa, a continent that will need its educated professional class if it is to rise out of its post-colonial mire of poverty and corruption. But how can a country like Ghana cope with the challenge when 47% of its university-educated citizens live abroad? Things will also be tough in Mozambique, which has lost 45% of its educated class, and in Kenya (38%), Somalia and Angola (both 33%).

The list goes on. Indeed, there are more African scientists in the United States than in all of the 54 countries of Africa.

It is hard to blame students for fleeing their impoverished homelands for greener educational pastures when 90% of the world’s funding for research and development in higher education goes to the US, Britain, Australia, Germany and Japan. Developing countries simply cannot compete in the global contest for talent. In an age where, more than ever, knowledge equals power and wealth, this amounts to a new form of colonialism holding poor countries back.

While in sheer numbers the world’s most populous countries – China and India – appear to suffer the most from brain drain, studies show they lose only about 5% of their graduates. For China, however, that has become too much as it sorely needs the expertise of many of its citizens living abroad.

No doubt a Shanghai survey published this year in the Labor Daily has added to official concern. The survey showed that 36.9% of the city’s middle-school students hope to become US citizens one day.

UK Business looks to recruit Chinese students

Businesses are turning to MBA students from China because they believe too few British graduates have Chinese language skills, according to a report.

Meanwhile, staff at Liverpool John Moores University used graduation ceremonies this week to protest against the cutting of Chinese studies as part of a reform of its language school.

Forty-one per cent of business leaders surveyed by the Hay Group consultancy said they planned to recruit Chinese MBA graduates.

Universities produce fewer than 500 graduates a year from programmes in which Mandarin forms a substantial part and the report’s authors said the lack of linguists would lose the UK opportunities in the Chinese market.

Deborah Allday, one of the authors, said: “We are about to face a war for talent both in China and in domestic markets as companies scramble to recruit talented leaders and managers with an understanding of the Chinese market and business culture.

“The British government needs to take a fresh look at the higher and further education curriculum in this country to determine the best way to make UK graduates and UK plc competitive in the global market place.”

She said companies should demand that all MBA students they fund should do a China module on their course and that the government should introduce more Chinese language teaching.

The study, based on interviews with business leaders in Europe, north America and Asia Pacific, found that British business expects sales to China to be worth 10 per cent of their global revenues by 2009.

Managers at Liverpool John Moores decided to drop courses in Chinese to concentrate on those in higher demand and with greater growth prospects.

Don Starr, president of the British Association of Chinese Studies, said: “It is a very resource intensive subject to learn and it is therefore expensive to teach. Because the funding does not recognise that extra cost, vice-chancellors find it cheaper to offer subjects like English and psychology that can be taught in large lecture theatres.”

The school system was compounding the problem, he added.

“Private-sector schools have been introducing Chinese in large numbers but the government has allowed 14-year-olds in state schools to drop languages entirely.”

The Higher Education Funding Council for England said it would work to find alternative universities for the 15 places that will be lost each year.

Teresa Tinsley, assistant director of the National Centre for Languages, said that although the number of people taking A-levels and GCSEs in the subject had steadily increased, the overall number still remained tiny.

“It is alarming that employers are turning to foreign students with Chinese language skills because that will make them less likely to tackle the shortage of UK nationals,” she said.

China hot on UK skills’ heels

The UK must educate its workforce to compete in the global knowledge economy, writes Lara Williams

A skills crisis in the software development sector could seriously damage the UK’s ability to compete globally, according to the second of the Microsoft-commissioned Developing the Future (DtF) reports published last week.

The IT industry is growing five to eight times faster than the national average and needs 150,000 new entrants each year. But the number of students taking A-level computing has dropped 43 per cent from 2001 to 2006, and IT-related degrees almost halved ­ from 27,000 to 14,700 ­ between 2001 and 2005.

Technology skills are vital to the growth of the UK as a knowledge economy ­ one relying on high-level skills rather than a manufacturing base or large pools of cheap labour.

At the moment the UK knowledge economy accounts for 41 per cent of gross domestic product, but the proportion is expected to rise to 50 per cent by 2010.
And without the right skills, the country will not be able to compete with overseas rivals. But it is not only established economies making the transition.

At the current growth rates China will surpass the UK in the near future, says Microsoft UK managing director Gordon Frazer, who is also a board member of sector skills council e-Skills UK.

‘The shift towards the knowledge economy in the UK presents great opportunities but we must be aware of the skills challenge,’ said Frazer.

The DtF warnings are not new. Only last month a government advisory group, the Information Age Partnership (IAP), released a report calling on government, industry and academia to work together to meet the needs of the EU i2010 knowledge economy agenda.

The IT industry does not simply need more people, says e-Skills UK chief executive Karen Price.

‘Whether I am talking to the IT industry or the chief information officer community, they are all telling me it is not the shortage of people but developing the right skillset to compete in the global marketplace,’ she said.

UK universities remain world-class at producing traditional computer scientists for research and development roles, says Price. But there are also vital non-technical requirements.

‘The new market opportunity is people combining business and technology skills and that is where the growth and skills shortage lies,’ said Price.

The private sector has a central role to play, says Paul Smith, managing director of offshore software development at recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash.

‘If each decent-sized company were to commit to providing excellent on-the-job training today, sponsoring students next year and working with a partner university on designing and funding a vocational course, the UK would be back on track in five years’ time,’ he said.

DtF recommendations include: a curriculum review of IT teaching in schools; encouragement to large software companies to enhance their education programmes; and pilots to establish how to form effective links between industry and academia.

Ahead of Olympics, China faces charges of child labor

Beijing – When a British-based labor consortium charged this week that factory workers as young as 12 are toiling to produce gear and souvenirs licensed by Beijing for its 2008 Olympics, China’s reaction was swift.

Beijing officials announced they would deal “seriously” with factories that violate China’s “very strict” labor codes. But the negative publicity – along with other reports that the problem goes beyond production of Olympic-related memorabilia – comes at a sensitive moment for Beijing as it seeks to burnish its international image ahead of the games.

Some observers say that the latest reports represent a weak point in China’s otherwise strong record of enforcing child labor laws – especially at a time when child labor is on the decline worldwide.

Playfair Alliance, which targets sporting goods and athletic merchandise, reported this week that child labor in China is not limited to a few factories making Olympic souvenirs but may be a growing, potentially widespread problem spurred by increasing labor shortages and rural poverty.

Another survey report from the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, which investigated a growing underage labor force in several small towns, found that poorly funded rural schools and a higher-than-recorded school dropout rate are forcing many children to work before the law allows.

In small towns across the vast Chinese countryside, kids age 13, 14, and 15 – below the legal working age of 16 – are entering the workforce as factory owners and other employers turn a blind eye, according to the report.

“Looking at the results of our on-site surveys, and reports in the Chinese media … we do not believe that the child labor problem in China has been suppressed that effectively,” said the China Labour Bulletin’s report.

A 2006 study from the International Labor Organization (ILO) said that overall, child labor has been reduced by 11 percent in the past four years worldwide.

Despite the recent studies, conclusive figures aren’t available in China, so no true comparison is possible. The Chinese government considers the topic too sensitive to allow international groups to conduct widespread national investigations of how many under-age workers appear in the labor force.

With the problem not yet quantified, labor-rights groups are relying on bits and pieces of information they can gather by interviewing factory workers, families, and school authorities. The anecdotal evidence shows increasing pockets of child labor, especially in the poorest areas and in factories that operate as subcontractors to major producers.

“We haven’t done a national study, but the assumption is that this is a national problem and therefore deserving of attention from the national government,” says Robin Munro, research director of China Labour Bulletin.

Some officials doubt reports
Even with the new charges regarding Chinese child labor infractions, some officials doubt the credibility of the China Labour Bulletin report. Constance Thomas, director of the ILO for China and Mongolia, says that without a thorough, conclusive study of the national scope of the problem, no one knows for sure what’s happening. Ms. Thomas has been trying to convince the Chinese government to undertake a major prevention campaign, but the mere mention of child labor has been too sensitive.

Thomas says she doesn’t see a widespread problem, especially when comparing China with countries like Pakistan and India where children age 8 and 9 are routinely found working. China’s doing pretty well, she maintains.

“We’re not picking up yet on any large numbers of child labor; we’re just not,” says Thomas.

However, she says, “There are pockets of child labor, and my concern is that they may be growing.”

There are “magnet factors” that could lead to a growing reliance on child labor, Thomas says, and China, with its previous track record in avoiding child labor, should address them. The three magnets, she says, are pockets of labor shortages, increasing numbers of privately owned business, which are more prone to unscrupulous hiring, and the huge mobility of the nation’s workforce.

Migrant work contributes to problem
China has as many as 200 million migrant workers who have left hometowns and provinces to fill its factories. At least 20 million of their children have been left behind with relatives and the kids are often forced to work when they reach their teenage years. Those who travel with their parents face prohibitively high school fees that can make work seem a more plausible option.

China needs to play to its strengths, says Thomas and others. For one, its standards are higher than the ILO’s, which considers anything under age 13 child labor. The Chinese government has set its minimum working age as 16, with limited working hours, or 18, for dangerous jobs with longer hours.

Anita Chan, a China labor scholar at Australian National University, says quantifying the child-labor problem is difficult, particularly when the country is having a difficult time enforcing labor standards for adults. In any case, she says, the country should stay firm to its strict anti-child labor laws and enforce them. Certainly, she says, government officials must realize that in addition to giving a country political problems, child labor can have basic economic consequences.

“If you hire a lot of children, the grown-ups won’t have jobs,” says Ms. Chan.