Archives 2013

Beijing seeks govt executives on contract to boost growth

An annual salary of no less than 200,000 yuan ($32,640) will be offered to six new high-ranking government employees hired by Beijing on fixed-term contracts, announced the capital’s public service authority.

The six senior executive positions, which are highly prioritized to boost the capital’s growth, are with agencies including the municipal science and technology committee, the transport commission and the economic-technological development area.

However, those positions are not government jobs for life, often referred to as the “iron rice bowl,” as the two or three-year-long contract not only has a probation period varying from three to six months, but also can be terminated should the person fail a performance test.

All Chinese citizens under the age of 45, physically and psychologically healthy with relevant qualifications and skills, can apply for the positions, reads the recruitment announcement.

Qualified candidates must file their application before 6 pm on June 24. Candidates have to pass a tailored written test, an interview, a comprehensive review and a seven-day public review period before being recruited.

Long before Beijing, Shenzhen already started recruiting government employees with a contract in 2007.

More than 3,200 of some 40,000 government employees are working there on a contract basis.

Contract-based recruitment, which smashes the permanence and stability of the “iron rice bowl,” has also been expanded to cities and provinces including Shanghai.

Generally, a candidate has to pass a unified civil service exam and an interview before being hired by a State organ. In 2012, some 1.5 million candidates took the exam, with 75 competing for a position on average.

Mao Shoulong, a public administration professor at the Renmin University of China, said it is suitable to recruit intermediate and senior professionals through contracts, who may be unwilling to take the general exam and not work in one place for their whole life.

However, Mao said he sees no need to recruit all government employees on a contract basis, adding that neither of the systems is foolproof.

Zhejiang opens uninhabited islands to private developers

Individuals could apply for the right to use uninhabited islands in Zhejiang Province for business development, with the longest possible lease 50 years, according to new local regulations formally implemented on Saturday.

Among the 2,639 uninhabited islands in Zhejiang Province, 31 are listed in the first published batch of 176 usable uninhabited islands nationwide, said Liu Xiangdong, an inspector with the Zhejiang Province Ocean and Fisheries Bureau at a press conference on Thursday.

The islands can be used for purposes from tourism to industry. Individuals could choose one from the 31 islands and submit an application including a concrete development plan to the county-level maritime authorities, Liu said.

After receiving an application, the authorities will publish the applicant’s name, the island involved, and the development plans to the public. They should also look for comments and receive approval from county-level governments, provincial maritime authorities and the provincial government, he said.

A bidding process will determine who gets the islands. If these islands have not been developed within three years, their rights could be withdrawn by the provincial government.

“The regulation is worth promoting nationwide,” Dong Liming, a vice director-general at the China Land Science Society, told the Global Times Friday. “With individuals working on the inhabited islands, our maritime economy could be developed and national defense could be strengthened.”

China Services Growth Slows Sharply, Adds To Recovery Risk

Growth in China’s services sector slowed sharply in April to its lowest point since August 2011, a private sector survey showed on Monday – fresh evidence of rising risks to a revival in the world’s No.2 economy.

The HSBC services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 51.1 in April from 54.3 in March, with new order expansion the slowest in 20 months and staffing levels in the service sector decreasing for the first time since January 2009.

Two separate PMIs last week had already shown that China’s manufacturing sector growth slowed, With the weakness spreading to services, which make up almost half of gross domestic product, the risk to the recovery may be increasing.

“The weak HSBC service PMI figure provides further evidence of a slowdown not only in the factory sector but also in the service sector,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief China economist at Nomura Securities in Hong Kong.

“This confirms our worries about insufficient growth momentum in the economy, which we expect to slow to 7.5 percent in the second quarter.”

The HSBC services PMI follows a similar survey by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which found non-manufacturing activity eased to 54.5 from 55.6. The official PMI is more weighted towards large state-owned firms.

Readings above 50 indicate activity in the sector is growing, while those below 50 indicate it is contracting.

The HSBC survey showed that the sub-index measuring new business orders dropped sharply to a 20-month low of 51.5 in April, with only 15 percent of survey respondents reporting an increased volume of new orders that month, HSBC said.

“This started to bite employment growth. All these are likely to add some risk to China’s growth in 2Q, as there’s still a bumpy road towards sustaining growth recovery,” said HSBC’s China chief economist Qu Hongbin.

The employment sub-index decreased to 49.6 in April, the first net reduction in staff numbers since January 2009, although HSBC said job losses were marginal, partially caused by firms down-sizing and employee resignations.

Employment is a decisive factor shaping government thinking because it is crucial for social stability. The services sector accounted for 46 percent of China’s gross domestic product in 2012, as big as the country’s better-known manufacturing industry.

China’s economic growth unexpectedly stumbled in the first quarter, slipping to 7.7 percent versus 7.9 percent in the previous three month period, as factory output and investment slowed.

The government has set a 2013 growth target of 7.5 percent, a level Beijing deems sufficient for job creation while providing some room to reform to the economy.

Any more weak data could spark a policy response.

“The risk of slower growth is rising, the Chinese government will probably take actions after April data come out,” said Jianguang Shen, chief China economist of Mizuho Securities Asia in Hong Kong.

“I see an increasing possibility for China to cut interest rates, but not likely any time in the near future, as housing inflation is a constraint.”

However a Reuters poll last month found that China’s central bank is expected to keep the benchmark one-year bank lending rate at 6 percent and the one-year bank deposit rate at 3 percent through 2013, as well as holding banks’ reserve requirement ratios (RRR) steady.

China Now Has More Than 260 Million Migrant Workers Whose Average Monthly Salary Is 2,290 Yuan ($374.09)

China’s migrant workers exceeded 260 million at the end of 2012, with an average monthly salary of 2,290 yuan ($374.09), according to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

The bureau published the 2012 Investigational and Monitoring Report of Chinese Migrant Workers on Sunday, according to Xinhua News, China’s state-owned news agency. At the end of 2012, the number of migrant workers in China increased by 3.9 percent to 262.61 million, and the average salary of migrant workers rose 241 yuan ($39.37) to 2,290 yuan per month.

Migrant workers were previously farmers or were farmers ancestrally, and as China has modernized have chosen to seek more profitable, most often industrial work, in urban centers across the country. Many – 160 million in 2012 – choose to migrate to metropolitan cities farther away from their home regions.

In terms of income, average monthly salary rose 11.8 percent to 2,290 yuan for Chinese migrant workers in 2012. Workers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau as well as foreign countries make significantly more – 5,550 yuan ($906.63) per month. Workers engaged in transportation and construction work have higher-than-average monthly salaries, 2,735 yuan ($446.78) and 2,654 yuan ($433.55), respectively.

Most migrant workers have not completed more than middle school- level education. In 2012, 1.5 percent of migrant workers were illiterate, 14.3 percent completed elementary school, 60.5 percent middle school, 13.3 percent high school, and 10.4 percent completed higher education. Younger workers and workers who went abroad have relatively higher education levels.

Migrant workers’ average age is increasing as well. In 2008, 70 percent of all migrant workers were below 40 years of age, and in 2012, only 59.3 percent were below 40. Accordingly, the average age increased from 34 to 37.3.

Significantly, many of these migrant workers were not working under contract, and were therefore not entitled to any form of social security. In 2012, 43.9 percent of migrant workers signed employment contracts, a similar percentage compared to previous years.

Meanwhile, 0.5 percent of migrant workers were not paid on time or at all, due to the lack of contracts. Only 14.3 percent received retirement benefits, 24 percent work-related injury insurance, 16.9 medical insurance, 8.4 percent unemployment and 6.1 percent maternity benefits. More than 40 percent of employers of migrant workers did not provide housing or housing subsidies, Xinhua News reported.

China’s graduates enter tight job market

BEIJING (AP) — Chemistry student Jiang Wenying graduated three years ago and decided the job market was so tough she might as well go back to school for a graduate degree. Now she’s finding it even worse, in what looks to be China’s tightest market ever for job-seeking graduates.

Jiang says she has sent out more than 1,000 job applications, netting no more than 10 interviews and not a single job offer.

Jiang, who received her graduate degree in chemical industry from the Harbin University of Science and Technology this year, recently traveled to Beijing to try her luck at a university campus job fair, but found no firm prospects there either.

“The job market has been getting worse by the year,” said the young woman, who looked dejected as she slouched against a column at the end of the job fair. She spoke just loud enough to be audible above the din of workers dismantling booths.

“There are far more chemical industry students than needed,” she said.

While the job market in China is still much better than in many other parts of the world, 2013 is being billed locally as the worst for young graduates. A record number of them — about 7 million — are leaving universities and graduate schools to seek their first employment at a time when companies are hiring fewer people. Women appear to be faring worse than men.

The stunning economic growth of the past dozen years is slowing, and gone are the days when graduates were assigned jobs in their respective industries — a system dismantled in the 1990s in China’s fast-changing economy.

The issue is politically sensitive because China’s urban, educated class has become outspoken about government shortcomings in dealing with ills ranging from endemic corruption to polluted air, and the tight job market could leave many among them disgruntled after more than a decade of economic expansion and rising expectations.

This year’s biggest-ever graduating class is the fruit of many years of government policy to boost enrollment, but the number of jobs for new hires has declined about 15 percent compared with the previous year, said Yang Xiong, director of the Youth Research Center in Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

“With those two factors, you end up with the toughest job market this year,” Yang said. “The global economy is not faring well, and China is part of the globalization. With closure of many export-oriented businesses and appreciation of the Chinese currency, employers have to slash on personnel.”

Preliminary data reported in state media show about a third of the 2013 class had signed employment contracts by May, compared to more than 40 percent a year ago. The number of students applying for graduate schools has reached a new high of 1.76 million.

The notion that education provides the promise of success has ancient, Confucian roots in China. It continues today, perhaps even more so because of family planning policies that often put the burden of a family’s future on a single child.

The country’s policy-makers — aware that a lack of jobs for the young and educated could be seen as a failure to uphold the social contract — have been urging that every measure be taken to help newly minted graduates gain employment, including creating more community-level jobs, reducing paperwork, recruiting for the military and promoting entrepreneurship.

“The employment of the graduating class affects economic development, improvement to living standards, and social stability,” said a central government document issued in mid-May when the issue was on the agenda of a state council meeting presided by Premier Li Keqiang.

Education Ministry spokeswoman Xu Mei told state media that the ministry and local education bureaus would offer more job fairs and online job-seeking services. “All sides are making efforts to ensure the employment rate of this year’s class won’t get lower,” she said. AP’s request for an interview with a ministry official on the issue was not immediately answered.

Some job seekers are lowering their expectations. Wang Yuan, an industrial design major at southern China’s Hunan Industrial University, thought a design job would be waiting for her after graduation. But nothing has become of the two dozen job applications she has sent out since last fall.

“They were like stones sinking into the sea,” said Wang, 23.

She has since changed her tack. “Any job will do, and choosiness will have to come later,” she said.

Lynn Lee, a 21-year-old law undergraduate student at Huaiyin Normal College in Jiangsu province, tried to find work in legal affairs, media, sales and executive assistance before finally landing a job as a bank teller near her hometown. Her job search included nearly 100 applications and several out-of-town trips.

“There were rounds of interviews, and many candidates had impressive academic credentials,” she said. “I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep at night, and now I’m left with a migraine.”

Lu Feng, an electronics senior at Xidian University in central Chinese city of Xi’an, said he was shocked to see a room filled with more than 1,000 applicants when he showed up for an interview with a technology firm from southern China recruiting for 20 jobs in his city. He got hired, and the job hunt took him only a couple of weeks.

Lu and several other male job seekers interviewed by The Associated Press said they feel they have better job prospects than females, and can even afford to be choosy.

China’s job market is notoriously discriminating. Employers have openly snubbed women, out-of-town job applicants and graduates from less prestigious institutions. This year, the Chinese State Council has demanded that employers make no requirement on gender, ethnicity, age, residence and type of school when hiring graduates of higher education, but the directive is unlikely to be followed.

When compared with elsewhere, China’s economy is still doing relatively well, with an overall urban unemployment rate of only 4.1 percent in 2012. That compared with unemployment rates ranging from 4.7 percent to more than 27 percent in European countries; the U.S. rate was 7.5 percent last month. However, a large share of China’s population is in the countryside, and urban data only cover a portion of China’s workforce.

Luo Xiaoming, editor-in-chief of the Chinese-language financial news site Caixun.com, said China’s economic growth of 7.7 percent for the first quarter should be able to absorb the increase in job seekers, but the challenge in the job market reflects a flaw in China’s investment-driven economy, which is expanding without job growth.

“This economic model has misled the market, resulting in excessive production capacity, and its lack of openness to the private sector has stifled innovation and entrepreneurship,” Luo said in explaining the lack of jobs in China. “Economic transformation has been stagnant.”

Some lay the blame on China’s education system, which they say is a mismatch to China’s job market.

Many jobs require only a polytechnical education, and perhaps China is currently producing too many university graduates, including doctoral-level students, said Yang, the youth research center director. That means many graduates end up with lower-level jobs that have little to do with their areas of study.

“Why would they want to take basic jobs? If they don’t, they become unemployed,” Yang said.

New Contracts for Civil Servants to go National

This is an extended abstract of an article that appeared in this week’s edition of The Economic Observer, for more highlights from the EO print edition, click here.

By the end of 2013, numerous provinces and cities across China will have launched pilot programs implementing fixed-term contracts in the hiring of civil servants. By the end of 2014, the contract system may be implemented nationwide.

Shenzhen was the first city to launch the contract system, doing so in 2007. Shenzhen was followed by Shanghai in 2008, and Jiangxi, Henan, Fujian, Liaoning, and Guangxi provinces in 2012. Jiangsu, Sichuan, Shanxi and Shandong provinces are expected to launch contract systems by the end of 2013.

When Shenzhen initially implemented the contract system it hired 41 civil servants. Now, Shenzhen hires all new civil servants through the contract system. Currently there are 3,000 civil servants under the contract system in Shenzhen, with another 500 to be added later this year.

The new contract system allows for more flexibility in the process of hiring officials. Applicants can be recruited directly and might be able to avoid the extended series of exams and interviews that others hoping to land a public service job are forced to go through.

The new system also differs from existing hiring practices in relation to how the salary package for such civil servants are determined. Traditionally, renumeration for most civil service positions are centrally determined according to their level. Under these new fixed-term contracts, employees enter into a wage agreement with the department hiring them and thus have more room to negotiate. The final salary of public servants that have been recruited according to the new contract system are determined by the contract they sign with the department.

Zhu Lijia (???), a professor at the Public Management Teaching and Research Department and director of the Public Administration Department at the China National School of Administration, says that the lack of regulations covering the direct recruitment of civil servants and the process of negotiating a salary package means that the system is open to abuse.

The new contract system is mainly used for recruiting highly-skilled professionals.

Liang Yuping (???), director of the Civil Servant Management Department at the Chinese Academy of Personnel Science, and Peng Jianfeng (???), a professor at the School of Labor and Personnel at Renmin University of China, believe that the contract system helps to both motivate and supervise civil servants.

However, Li Jianzhong (???), a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Personnel Science, told the EO that preventing people becoming civil servants through direct recruitment and preventing local governments from providing unreasonably high wages to civil servants, is the best way to guard against corruption.

Last year over 1.5 million people registered to take the national civil service exam. They were competing for approximately 20,800 positions.

Liu Xin, a professor at the Institute of Organization and Human Resources at Renmin University, recently explained to Time Magazine why so many Chinese graduates are attracted to a career in the country’s civil service. “As a civil servant in China, unless you quit or make a big mistake, you have a job for life,” he said. “It’s the iron rice bowl. That’s especially important during an economic downturn.”

The roll out of these new fixed-term contracts along with mounting job pressures, may begin to alter this perception.

Large tungsten mine discovered in E China

Geologists have discovered a large tungsten mine in east China’s Jiangxi Province, officials said Thursday.

More than 1 million tonnes of tungsten and associated copper have been found at the mine in the Zhuxi mineral area of Fuliang County in the northeast part of the province, said Peng Zezhou, chief of the provincial geology and mineral resources exploration bureau.

The Ministry of Land and Resources confirmed the discovery on Wednesday on its website.

A maximum depth of 449 meters of tungsten and 30 meters of associated copper in the mine has been penetrated, said Peng.
The reserve explored is in the same province as the world’s largest tungsten mine, which was found in Wuning County, Jiujiang City, Jiangxi. It holds tungsten reserves totalling 1.06 million tonnes.

Geologists said they expect to find more tungsten at the newly-discovered mine, which could oust the mine in Wuning County as the world’s largest.

Why Chinese College Graduates Aren’t Getting Jobs

The term “hardest job-hunting season in history” has become a buzzword in China recently. According to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 6.99 million students will be graduating institutions of higher education this year, a record high since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

This intimidating number is inextricably tied with discussion of another pressing issue: the employment rate of college graduates. The latest statistics released by Beijing Municipal Commission of Education show that only 33.6 percent of college graduates in Beijing have signed employment contracts, up 5 percent from April. Meanwhile, a recent report by Tecent-Mycos reveals that college graduates face gloomy employment prospects.

“I just can’t figure out why it’s so hard to get a job this year,” said Miranda Zhang, who is graduating from a university in Beijing. “I feel desperate –campus recruitment is competitive, with dozens of people competing for one position, while HR offices out in the real world usually disregard graduating students because we do not have any prior work experience.”

This has not always been the case. Before the financial crisis in 2008, economic prospects for China and Chinese students were a lot better. Businesses were expanding, new companies were emerging, and thus hordes of new employees were needed. However, as China’s growth has slowed to 7.5 percent this year, businesses, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, are showing signs of shrinking. The numbers show that Miranda is not alone in her worries — the total number of job openings is down 15 percent from 2012.

As Chinese college students come face to face with these gloomy prospects, complaints or expressions of disappointment have grown in online communities such as Sina Weibo (a Twitter-like service), Renren (a Facebook-like service) and Douban (an IMDB-like website for users with shared interests in movies, books, and music).

One of the most common complaints is the unfairness recent graduates have experienced in the job interview process. In fact, a lack of transparency or the use of guanxi (connections) is particularly evident in competition for jobs at state-owned enterprises or in civil service — these positions are considered much more stable and better-paying than other jobs in China.

Sara Wang, a journalism student at Wuhan University, described what she thought to be unfair competition for a job at Chinese National Radio. She stated that she made it all the way through the resume selection process and written exams to the last round of interviews, but was eliminated during the physical examination. She speculated that someone else used guanxi to get the job, but was unable to prove that this had been the case. Perhaps that is why Weibo user @????? proposed that to solve the problem of unemployment, “the essential thing to do is to ensure the transparency and fairness of the employment process.”

Some attributed the large-scale unemployment to the college students themselves. Netizen @???? wrote:
How can you satisfy a bunch of poor college students who have grandiose aims but puny abilities? What they want is a job that does not require much labor, in which they do not need to expose themselves to the elements, one with high social status and a high salary, where they can play games while they are at work and attend social gatherings while they are off work; in other words, a “golden rice-bowl” job within the system. [College students] think that with their educational achievements, they do not belong to the working class anymore and that they deserve a white-collar job at the very least. No wonder they cannot get a job.
While this is true to some extent, a larger proportion of people held the government responsible for the unemployment problem. In fact, the public has long criticized Chinese colleges’ blind expansion.

Weibo user @M3MStudio mused:
The Ministry of Education is responsible for maintaining the employment rate — isn’t that ridiculous?” “The Ministry of Education should feel guilty because students nowadays cannot make full use of what they learn in college, and what they learn in college is useless in their careers. Colleges are like companies; teachers are like bosses; and students have become nothing but tools for colleges and teachers to compete for fame and profit. The education system in mainland China has collapsed.
Despite such gloom, Xu Mei, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, suggested that the employment rate and the number of graduating students signing employment contracts would increase greatly in June. At the same time, Xu also affirmed that the Ministry would act to ensure that the employment rate of college graduates would not decrease, a statement to which netizens responded with some derision.

Weibo user @??LostMyself wrote, “The Ministry of Education’s prediction will be realized with 100 percent success, because this is what they are best at. I believe every graduate knows the real deal with the so-called employment contract signing rate!”

Alarming drop in Chinese graduates landing jobs

Yang Biao has spent every weekend for the past two months at job fairs. The 25-year-old, who will finish a Chinese literature degree at Beijing University of Technology in July, has also sent out nearly 200 job applications.

“I do feel like I’m running out of time and I’m getting more anxious as each day passes,” he said. “But I can only cross my fingers and hope I will no longer need to live off my parents.”

Yang is one of a record nearly seven million students who will graduate from mainland universities this year and enter the job market during a marked economic slowdown.

By early this month, 52.4 per cent of mainland students about to graduate had signed job contracts, down seven percentage points on the same time last year. In the industrial hub of Guangdong, the rate was 46 per cent, and in Beijing, home to such top universities as Peking and Tsinghua, it was just 33.6 per cent.

Graduates majoring in English, law, computer science and technology, accounting, international trade and industrial and commercial administration are finding it harder to find jobs.

President Xi Jinping made a high-profile visit to a job fair in Tianjin on May 14 to reassure jobseekers, pledging to create more jobs by boosting economic growth. Xi told the graduates he met that having a job was the foundation of people’s livelihood and that employment struggles were becoming a global problem, Xinhua said. He was quoted as saying that only economic development could help improve the situation.

A day later, Premier Li Keqiang chaired a State Council meeting that outlined several measures designed to keep the employment rate for graduates no lower than last year.

The State Council also promised to tackle discrimination and inequality in the job market and to provide jobseekers from poor families with one-off allowances to help them find jobs.

Yang, from a rural family, said more than half his classmates were still looking for a job by the middle of this month. Because he was about to graduate from a less prestigious university, he did not expect a well-paid job, just one that could support him.

He said he had turned down a job offer from a Beijing kindergarten with a base salary of 1,700 yuan (HK$2,130) a month because it was not enough to make ends meet, given that he would have to move out of his parents’ home on Beijing’s outskirts to work in the city centre. Yang tried to get into a postgraduate school to further his studies and boost his competitive edge, but failed the entrance exam in February.

Another jobseeker, Ji Yinrui , said the cost of pre-employment accreditation courses in the computer and IT sector was a bigger problem for him than the tight job market. Ji, who will graduate from a university in Tianjin with a degree in computer science and technology, said many big-name employers in the computer and information technology sector required newly graduated jobseekers to take accreditation courses from privately run career training institutions as a condition for recruitment.

But such courses, which lasted up to six months and cost between 10,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan, were beyond the reach of jobseekers like him from poor rural families.

“I understand the employers’ concerns about a general lack of workplace skills among graduates nowadays, but isn’t that an issue about how we’ve been taught in universities?” he said. “Because what we’re required to learn at the private training schools is exactly what we should have been taught at university, especially during our last semester.”

Ji’s hunt began in November and he has given himself another two months to land a job, even a part-time one, because he says it is time to stop relying on his parents and stand on his own feet.

Citing a survey by the National University Student Information and Career Centre, China Central Television reported on May 19 that demand for recruits by employers with more than 1,000 employees was down by 3.6 per cent compared with last year.

A university degree no longer guarantees a decent job on the mainland because a reckless, government-led push for expansion since the late 1990s has seen the number graduating each year more than triple in the past decade.

The prospects of landing highly sought-after positions at government agencies and state-owned enterprises are often linked to power and money.

Some 500 college graduates in Shanxi lost tens of millions of yuan between 2008 and last year to a rogue job agency in a scam in which they were each swindled out of between 200,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan paid in return for promises of jobs in the state-owned sector.

As competition in the job market gets fiercer, those from less privileged families also face all sorts of discrimination and administrative barriers.

Zhao Lili , a postgraduate student in Beijing originally from Henan , said she faced twin difficulties in job hunting – as a woman and someone without Beijing household registration, or hukou.

“Many recruiters have shown no interest in me after learning that I’m not a local resident because they think I’m more of a liability than a local applicant,” she said.

Zhao, who is studying business management, said a far larger proportion of male students in her faculty had found jobs than had female students.

Xiong Bingqi , deputy director of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute, said governments needed to play a bigger role in creating jobs, boosting transparency in recruitment and addressing inequality in access to sought-after positions.

Xiong also warned against a public preoccupation with statistics about the job outlook for university graduates, which could put pressure on universities to doctor their employment figures and force students to rush into jobs they disliked.

Studies by Mycos Data, a mainland consultancy specialising in higher education, show that 38 per cent of university graduates in 2009 left their jobs after six months.

“So job-creation efforts for college graduates are not a seasonal issue, but should begin shortly after students enter universities and continue all the way through the first three or five years of their career and even longer,” Xiong said.

How Much Does a Chinese Automotive CEO Earn?

It’s a well known fact that Chinese labor is somewhat cheaper than what is available in the West, however in recent years Chinese salaries have sky rocketed at a rapid pace for the average white collar worker. Entry level jobs for a recent graduate in Shanghai will net around 5000RMB (812USD) per month at the minimum, post grads can look forward to around 8000RMB per month (13,000USD), even more if they have previous work experience and international experience.

So how much does a CEO take in, specifically the CEO of major Chinese automotive companies? Those that are listed on the HK stock exchange have to reveal the director level payment packages so investors can clearly see where their money is going. Of course, some Western CEO’s take a token 1USD salary but have decent stock options instead and we’re sure the situation in China is largely the same in China as well. If they lead the company well their stock returns will be much higher than their salaries and of course have lower tax on them as well.

In 2012 BYD’s billionaire chairman netted a 2.77 million RMB salary (438,525USD), but that was down from his 4 million RMB salary in 2011, of course BYD’s total income was down by around 800 million over the same period so its nice to know that even CEO’s are taking austerity seriously. Wang Chuan Fu nets the highest salary in the Chinese auto business, but the gentlemen is also China’s richest man so his BYD salary is likely chump change to him.

Li Shu Fu, the Chairman of Geely and the brains behind the Volvo saw profit rise 32.2% at the Hangzhou based company, but his salary is just 327,000RMB per year ($53,122USD), probably on par with some of his own mid level white collar staff.

JMC’s GM Chen Yuan Qing hasn’t seen a payrise in three years on his 238,240RMB per year salary (37,500USD), his salary is reportedly paid in USD so he is losing money whilst the RMB appreciates against the USD.

Geely’s CEO Gui Xian Rui brings in just over 2 million RMB with his salary approaching 2.36 million RMB per year, a nice increase over 2011?s salary where he netted 1.96 million, a further 3.41 million RMB was given to him in stocks, bring a total of 5.77 million into Mr. Gui’s bank account. nice.

Great Wall’s Board Chairman Wei Jian Ping’s salary rocketed from 1.74 million RMB to 2.47 million RMB over the course of 2011 to 2012.

Four companies are offering salaries between one million and two million RMB per year: Foton, SAIC, Ningtong and GAC. Ningtong Coach didn’t see any major salary upgrades in 2011, with CEO salary staying at 1.2 million RMB. SAIC’s CEO Chen Hong’s salary jumped from 917,000RMB in 2011 to 1.36 million RMB in 2012.

Foton and GAC saw a salary drop in 2012, probably due to a poor financial show in 2011. Foton’s General Manager Wang Jin Yu saw a salary decrease of 3.1% with a net salary of 1.88 million, Foton’s total income dropped 20.7% in 2012 with profit increasing 17.4%.