Category News of China

HK jobless up

Hong Kong’s seasonally adjusted jobless rate nudged up from 4.1 percent in the May-to-July period to 4.2 percent from June to August, officials said yesterday. Increases in the jobless rate were experienced mainly in the communications, real estate and wholesale trade sectors, the Census Statistics Department of Hong Kong said.

Decreases in the underemployment rate, which held stable at 2.3 percent, were seen mainly in foundation and superstructure construction, and communications sectors, offsetting increases in welfare and community services and retail trade. Total employment grew by about 10,100 from 3,494,200 in May-July to an all-time high of 3,504,300 in June-August. Over the same period, the labor force swelled by about 18,500 from 3,652, 200 to a new high of 3,670,700.

ADB: China’s GDP growth to hit 11.2%, CPI to top 4%

BRISK exports, strong investment and buoyant consumption will lift China’s economic growth to 11.2 percent this year, up from an earlier estimate of 10 percent, with the inflation rate breaking 4 percent, says an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report released in Beijing today.

“The faster than expected growth momentum built up this year is expected to carry into 2008,” said Zhuang Jian, senior economist of ADB’s China Resident Mission, at a news conference.

The new ADB report also forecasts that China’s GDP growth in 2008 will reach 10.8 percent, revising from the 9.8 percent in an ADB report published in March.

Zhuang said China’s economy grew at a faster-than-expected 11.5percent in the first half of 2007, which is the highest rate since1994.

According to Zhuang, China’s fast economic growth was led by industry, especially in such sectors as steel, electricity, chemicals, and oil processing.

Strong profitability, buoyant sales and still-low lending rates also drove investment during the period.

The ADB report said investment administered by local governments grew by 28.1 percent in the first six months, nearly doubling the equivalent central government rate.

China’s inflation barometer – the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is estimated to hit 4.2 percent this year and 3.8 percent in 2008 as against the previous forecasts of 1.8 percent and 2.2 percent respectively, according to the ADB report.

Zhuang said rising global grain prices and a pig disease outbreak led to rocketing food prices, but this is expected to ease next year, paving the way for the implementation of planned reforms in the pricing of state-controlled sectors such as water, power and natural gas.

Significantly higher than expected inflation, however, poses a risk to the outlook. Zhuang said adverse weather would lower domestic grain production at a time when imported grain prices are high.

Chinese company picks Peachtree City£ºNew plant will create 200 jobs at facility on 241-acre site

By KEVIN DUFFY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 09/12/07

Georgia’s business ties with the People’s Republic of China grew a little stronger Wednesday.

The state and Sany Heavy Industry Co. of Changsha, China, formally announced that the maker of construction equipment will open a plant in Peachtree City and create 200 jobs.

Sany will invest $30 million in land, buildings and equipment. Operations at the 241-acre site are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2009.

Sany is the third Chinese company in 15 months to announce it will do business in Georgia.

Hans Gant, senior vice president for economic development at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, said Sany is the biggest recruitment success so far because in 10 years its work force could grow to 600 and its investment to $100 million.

Sany makes concrete-pumping equipment. Two examples of what it produces, extending 121 feet in the air, were parked in front of the Capitol during the announcement.

Sany Group, the parent company, employs 18,000 people and sells in more than 60 countries. Company Chairman Liang Wengen, who was at the ceremony, is a billionaire, according to Forbes magazine.

“What won the deal is just we wanted the business,” Gant said.

Financial incentives played a role. Sany will receive declining property tax abatements over 10 years that will save the company an estimated $2.2 million, according to Matthew Forshee, president and chief executive of the Fayette County Development Authority. During that time, Sany will pay about $2.75 million in property taxes, Forshee said.

In addition, Peachtree City will chip in $50,000 and Fayette County $150,000 to help Sany buy its industrial park site, priced at $6.5 million.

The state Department of Community Affairs will make available a $900,000 Regional Economic Business Assistance grant.

The Georgia Economic Development Department and the metro chamber have been building relationships with Chinese businesses and government officials for several years.

“It hasn’t happened by accident,” Gov. Sonny Perdue told the audience. “We’ve been in Asia and China looking for relationships and partnerships.”

The state recently began operating a one-person office in Beijing, and it’s lobbying China to open a consulate in Atlanta. Delta Air Lines is trying to secure direct flights from Atlanta to Beijing and to Shanghai.

In June 2006, the business recruiting trips began to pay off. Kingwasong, which makes soy sauce, announced it would invest $12 million to $15 million in a new plant in Newnan, creating 200 jobs. In May, a second Chinese business, General Protecht Group, which makes electronic equipment, bought 211 acres in Barnesville to build a plant.

In his translated remarks to the crowd, Liang mentioned Georgia’s airports, roads, ports ¡ª even its trees ¡ª as he explained why his company chose the state.

He called it “the outstanding talents in the blessed land.”

Union will push for collective bargaining

ALTHOUGH collective wage bargaining was being used by more companies, it still needed promotion, the Shanghai Trade Union said yesterday.

Along with the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau and the Shanghai Enterprise Confederation, the union will have a conference promoting collecting wage bargaining this afternoon.

Under collective bargaining, a company’s salaries are set after discussion and voting by all the employees.

“Wages are the key issue which directly influences the relationships between workers and employers,” said Wu Meng, an official of the Shanghai Trade Union.

“We encourage employers to set up collective bargaining with their workers to ensure that everyone can get a share of the company’s success,” he said.

Shanghai began collective bargaining in 1998 and by the end of June this year, 46,600 businesses in the city had joined the system which covered about 1.45 million employees.

But the union said this was not nearly enough.

“There were more than 500,000 businesses at the end of last year,” Wu said. “So those which have set up collective bargaining only account for a small portion.”

Wu said there were 49,000 private businesses in the city and it might be difficult to get every private company involved in collective bargaining because many workers were unaware of their rights.

A union survey found that most employees in privately-owned enterprises thought wages should only be set by the employers.

“They don’t believe that workers can negotiate wages with employers,” Wu said.

China’s Misguided 3G Mobile Strategy

In July, reports surfaced that China’s two mobile telecoms giants had hit upon a novel marketing strategy. In the east China city of Suqian, China Mobile and China Unicom were giving away cases of local beer to new subscribers.

An analyst quoted in the Financial Times noted that, although a duopoly, the two companies were competing to lure subscribers as though there were “10 competitors fighting it out.”

As effective as beer-driven marketing may be during a sweltering summer, if this is what passes for innovation in mobile telecommunications then the nearly 500 million Chinese mobile phone users might want to reach for something stronger.

The problem is that while China’s two mobile phone operators might market with a competitive verve, they behave like the government-managed duopoly they are when it comes to technical innovation.

Wireless value-added services (WVAS) are largely limited to the standard 2G diet of ring tones, ring back tones and text-based gimmicks. Many of these come from small, third-party providers over which the operators maintain rigid control. This has generated more controversy than innovation as WVAS providers have struggled with shady customer recruiting practices, the duopoly’s financial demands and wide-ranging content restrictions. Revenues are declining across the board and many WVAS providers are teetering on the brink of failure, let alone dreaming up exciting new products.

As a result, the largest mobile telephone market in the world is a technological desert overshadowed by far more fertile territories in Korea and Japan.

A MISGUIDED STRATEGY
Don’t be misled. China’s telecommunications regulators are committed to domestic innovation. Unfortunately, they have chosen to focus on the development of a domestic 3G standard, TD-SCDMA, rather than using a foreign equivalent.

This is exactly the wrong the approach.

The lesson of the internet’s success is that the underlying network is just the starting line. The great explosion in innovation and wealth creation has been in the services and applications that run on the network. That’s why Google is worth US$160 billion less than 10 years after it was founded.

What is more, TD-SCDMA is stuck in the starting gate and China’s telecoms regulator refuses to issue licenses for it or any other standard until it is ready. Licensing has slipped from 2004 to “early 2006” to “late 2006 or early 2007” to “before the Olympics” to “we’ll get back to you.”

For Chinese users, this means continued reliance on creaky “2.5G” data networks and the same moldy basket of uninspiring services.

What’s heartbreaking is that in the years China has dawdled over TD-SCDMA, all the ingredients that would have enabled it to be a global leader in mobile applications have come together.

Global 3G standards and technologies have improved and are beginning to live up to early expectations. Handset technology has also matured to the point where real web browsing, IP telephony and even Chinese handwriting input are practical. Motorola’s Ming and the turbo-hyped Apple iPhone, a sleek mobile PC cunningly disguised as a phone, are signposts to the future.

ENGINE FOR GROWTH
With the largest mobile user base in the world, China is in a perfect position to be the mobile application laboratory for Asia, if not the world.

While many of China’s mobile phone users are low-revenue customers content with basic services, there is an increasingly affluent, mobile and internet-addicted youth generation already pushing the current services to the limit. Mobile internet access could have a much broader impact in China than PC-based access has ever had.

China could exploit this potential by swallowing its pride, accepting a proven global 3G standard and ordering mobile operators to open their networks and support third-party IP-based services. That could spur real innovation and make this the golden age of mobile services in China.

But as long as the state-owned enterprise mentality and top-down technical policy making prevail, that golden age will remain elusive. Instead of being the innovation leader it should be, China will remain the world’s largest mobile telephony backwater and 500 million mobile phone users will be left treading water.

City’s job market expands 20%

THE number of job vacancies and job seekers in Shanghai’s second quarter have risen about 20 percent compared to the first quarter this year, according to a job market report issued yesterday.

The report, released by the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau, said 20,000 enterprises registered with the Shanghai Job Placement Center’s Website (jobs.12333sh.gov.cn) and other job Websites, offering a total of 390,000 vacancies, a 20.7-percent rise from the first quarter.

A record of 419,000 people applied for jobs at public job placement centers across the city, rising by 23.2 percent from the first quarter, with most job seekers being 25 to 34 years old.

The report said the average age of the job seekers was 32, and 80 percent were under 35, while only 10 percent of the total were older than 45. The number of applicants over 45 decreased by 8.3 percent from the first quarter and 22.5 percent from the same period last year.

The city’s key sectors, such as medicine manufacturing, chemical and logistic industries, attracted the most job seekers, with the employment demand-to-supply ratio at about 0.3.

According to the report, a total of 1,009 people applied for 273 medicine manufacturing jobs, putting the demand-to-supply ratio at 0.27, the lowest in the top 10 industries.

The center’s career information analyst said the strong competition was due to job seekers following growing industries.

But some occupations are suffering a shortage of qualified staff.

Only 35,402 applications were received for 48,467 sales positions posted during the second quarter.

Jobs in securities investment companies also faced a shortage of staff with the bullish stock market generating a huge demand.

Only 1,189 of the 6,578 jobs in securities firms were filled, giving a demand-to-supply ratio of 5.53.

Online leaks anger job seekers

RESUMES for job applications are believed to be the biggest source of Internet privacy invasions.

A survey of 300 people by 1010job.com, a city-based online human resources agent, revealed that 75 percent of the respondents complained that personal information from their resumes had landed in the hands of unauthorized companies.

Insurance companies lead the list of the most unwanted recipients of this information, followed by real estate agents and investment companies.

But the majority of the respondents (most of whom live in Shanghai) agreed that they did not mind if employment agencies or head hunters obtained the information.

“Insurance companies are really annoying. They keep calling my cell phone asking me to buy all sorts of insurance,” said Jiang Wenwen, a graduating college student.

As a student, Jiang said that she had tried to restrict the amount of information she provided on the Web, except for the resumes she sent to employment agencies.

“My resume is probably the only way companies can get information about me,” she said.

Jiang is not alone. More than half the respondents believed that online resumes were the source of the leaked information, although a quarter said that hard-copy resumes handed out at job fairs were also a likely source.

A few suggested that employment agencies themselves sold the information to companies.

In 2005, Xinhua News Agency discovered insurance companies buying university graduates’ resumes at job fairs for one yuan (13 US cents) each.

Last year, law makers began drafting laws to protect personal information, including the possibility that employers who carelessly discard resumes might face legal action.

While most of the surveyed applicants wanted some protection of their privacy on the Internet, two-thirds agreed that it would be difficult to prevent personal information being leaked because of the demand for employment.

Thousands of companies forced to pay back wages

LABOR officials in the city forced companies to pay 280 million yuan (US$36.98 million) in delayed wage, social insurance fees and illegal deposits from employees from January to June, the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau said yesterday.

The bureau received more than 10,000 complaints about delayed wages or other fees during the period and inspected more than 20,000 companies around the city. They found 6,987 violations of the law involving about 370,000 workers in total.

The bureau wouldn’t provide comparison figures from previous years.

About 39 percent of complaints investigated involved social insurance fees, while delayed wages accounted for 26 percent and unpaid overtime was the focus of 19 percent of grievances.

About 150 million yuan in delayed payments were cleared up during the six-month period.

“The number of cases of deliberately delaying wages dropped during the first half of the year,” said bureau official Zhang Yuan, without providing detailed numbers.

“Most of the delayed payments were for extra work or overtime working, and the delays were only one or two months, rather than as long as a year,” Zhang said.

The bureau said most of the companies found violating the law were private firms based in the city’s suburbs. It wouldn’t say how many fines were handed out.

Bureau: Labor rifts at private firms fall

THE proportion of labor disputes involving private enterprises has dropped for the first time since 2003, according to the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau.

Though a majority of labor disputes still involved private firms, accounting for 40 percent of the total number in the first half, it fell by 11.7 percent compared to the same period last year, the bureau said in its report for the first half of the year released yesterday.

“The number of cases involving privately-owned companies has seen a 20 percent increase in recent years, since many private enterprises were just starting up,” Sui Wei, director of the bureau’s arbitration division, suggested.

“But the decreased percentage this time implies that employers now have a better awareness of the labor law and pay more attention to protecting employees’ rights,” Sui said.

The arbitration division received 15,712 disputes in the first half of the year, of which 13,424 were cleared, a 16 percent increase from last year.

The number of disputes involving foreign-invested companies and those from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan rose by three percent, accounting for 23 percent of total disputes.

Meanwhile, stockholding companies saw their case number rise about four percent, making up 15 percent of the total.

According to the division, most of the disputes revolved around wages, social insurance and contract termination.

Among the 4,085 cases arbitrated in the first half, 34 percent were won by employees.

The report also estimated that social insurance disputes could rise next year, because a new labor law will go into effect on January 1, 2008.

The new law stipulates that employees can end their contract if companies fail to hand in standard social security fees.

“In such cases, firms violating the law should pay compensation to employees,” said Sui.

IPR engineers

THE city’s first group of 270 patent management engineers gained their certificates yesterday after they passed training courses.

They will improve protection of intellectual property in local companies, said Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration officials, which plans to train 3,000 patent management engineers by 2010. Shanghai Intellectual Property Service Center, Shanghai University and Shanghai Institute of Politics and Law are the city’s three training bases.