Category News of China

Post-1990 generation picky about jobs: research

The young generation shows a different attitude, which makes them more frequently miss a job interview, turn down offers and have no qualms about quitting if the work is not to their taste.

Members of the post-1990 generation looking for work apply for multiple positions and hold high expectations of the jobs, a reflection of young people’s changing attitudes amid the country’s development, recent research showed.

When fresh graduates do snag a job interview, they are also more likely to miss it, turn down offers and have no qualms about quitting if the work is not to their taste.

These were some of the main findings of research conducted by leading Chinese recruitment website 51job.com.

Of those surveyed, 45.1 percent of employers said more than half of job candidates failed to turn up on time for interviews.

More than 60 percent of fresh graduates also felt they needed help from their parents to look for work, the research showed.

The website surveyed 2,357 enterprises and 1,230 fresh graduates nationwide over 15 days in 2013.

Liu Jinjin, deputy director of the human resources department at the Social Sciences Academic Press, said members of the post-1990 generation are picky about employment and it was common for them to break appointments for job interviews.

“Most of the post-1990 generation are the only child in the family. Their living conditions have greatly improved from that of the post-1980 and post-1970 generations. They don’t experience much pressure in life so they pay closer attention to personal preferences and interests when hunting for a job,” Liu said.

The post-1990 generation also does not care about the amount of money they make. Instead, the working environment, the happiness they derive from their work and respect from others are what matter most, she said.

“The post-1990 generation does not think twice about leaving in their first year of work. If they lose interest in a job or are not clear about their future career path, they will quit easily,” Liu said.

Members of the generation are also more self-oriented. They want more time for themselves and are not willing to work overtime.

Their attitude to life is more casual, Liu said.

Zhang Gao, the campus brand director of Chinese Internet search giant Baidu, said a survey it conducted this year found that the post-1990 generation focus on work-life balance.

“They need some space when they work and don’t want to be managed too strictly,” Zhang said, adding that members of that generation often choose to work according to their interests and have their own ideas and views about work.

Zhu Guangchuan, 22, will graduate from Sanya College in Hainan province this July. He told China Daily he is now working as an Internet salesman for a local travel company.

“I chose this work out of interest. I think the salary is not the most important factor, and I focus on the opportunities for career development,” he said.

Zhu said he once received about five notices for job interviews but only attended the one he was most interested in.

“My parents are open-minded, so they respect my personal choice,” he said.

Sun Wan, born in 1990, is a fresh graduate who majored in Japanese. She said 30 to 40 percent of her classmates are not working after their graduation. Many plan to go abroad or take up postgraduate studies.

“I am not desperate for a job, although I have received some offers from employers. I plan to undertake a one-year training program in Japan then hunt for a job there. I like their corporate culture, and I also specialize in Japanese.”

Sun said she once had an internship at a hotel but gave it up because the work was very tiring.

She said she follows her heart when job-hunting.

“If I don’t like the work in Japan, I will consider coming back home.” Her family does not require her to work immediately, she said.

Members of the post-1990 generation also pose challenges for employers.

Feng Lijuan, the chief consultant at 51job.com, said members can access lots of information online every day and have many work opportunities, so they compare and deliberate on different positions and might not stay in a company for long.

Feng said employers should communicate with their post-1990 employees regularly and provide counseling to help them solve problems.

This generation is very sensitive and has a lot of self-esteem, so employers need to be concerned about their temperaments and ways of communication, she said.

Roche’s office in Hangzhou ‘sealed off’

Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche AG China’s Hangzhou office is said to have been sealed off by the local administration, according to news portal Netease.com.

Meanwhile, the company’s Beijing office is reportedly under investigation, according to the Chinese website.

“More than 20 officials rushed into the Hangzhou office, shut down the door, and asked employees not to leave,” the news portal quoted a Sina Weibo user on Wednesday.

China Daily tried to contact one staff member at the company, but he refused to answer the phone.

The reported sealing off of Roche’s office comes after an executive with British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline was charged last week for allegedly bribing doctors and hospitals to use the company’s drugs.

Roche, the world’s largest manufacturer of cancer drugs, has said it has seen continued strong growth in China in recent years.

Preliminary manufacturing PMI beats expectations

Workers assemble molybdenum refining equipment at a Citic Heavy Industries Co Ltd plant in Luoyang, Henan province.

A preliminary Purchasing Managers Index for China’s manufacturing sector in May has beaten expectations, suggesting that the economy is stabilizing.

The PMI, released by HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics, was at 49.7, exceeding the 48.3 median estimated by analysts. It was also a big rise from a final reading of 48.1 in April.

At the same time, the number remained below the expansion-contraction mark of 50. The final reading will be released June 3.

China, Russia pledge stronger cooperation in trade, energy

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin sign a joint statement aimed at expanding cooperation in all fields and coordinating diplomatic efforts to cement the China-Russia all-round strategic partnership of cooperation after their talks in Shanghai, east China, May 20, 2014.

China and Russia on Tuesday vowed to beef up cooperation in a wide range of fields, including finance, trade, energy and transportation infrastructure.

The pledge came in a joint statement during a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin is in China for the 4th summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Shanghai and a state visit at the invitation of President Xi Jinping. Xi held talks with Putin in Shanghai on Tuesday.

According to the joint statement, the two countries will expand local currency settlement for bilateral trade, cross-border investment and financing and will strengthen exchanges for the formulation of macro-economic policies.

The two pledged to increase bilateral trade to 100 billion U.S. dollars by 2015 and 200 billion U.S. dollars by 2020 from nearly 90 billion U.S. dollars last year.

The two will work to ensure balanced trade, optimize trade structure and expand mutual investment in fields like transportation infrastructure, mining development, and housing projects in Russia, said the statement.

The two sides vowed to deepen cooperation in the petroleum industry, kick-start Russia’s supply of natural gas to China as soon as possible and jointly develop coal mines in Russia. The two also will consider jointly building power plants in Russia to increase power supply to China.

The two countries will strengthen cooperation in major projects in the peaceful use of nuclear energy, civil aviation, research on basic aerospace technologies, satellite navigation and manned space flight, said the statement.

The two will speed up the construction of cross-border transportation infrastructure, including bridges on cross-border rivers, and Russia will facilitate China’s goods shipment using its railway networks, ports and through the Northern Sea route, said the statement.

The countries also pledged constructive cooperation in the use and protection of water resources in cross-border rivers as well as in the establishment of cross-border nature reserves to protect biodiversity.

Spirit of success moves nation’s entrepreneurs

A worker with the Jiangxi-based high-tech company Shanshui Electronics Co Ltd sorts circuit boards. Tens of thousands of private equity and venture capital firms are believed to be behind China’s vibrant technology, media and telecommunication sector.

Gong Yan, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the China Europe International Business School, shows passion when he talks about Tesla Motors Inc.

For him, the California-based company represents a “disruptive innovation” that few Chinese companies have achieved.

Tesla, he says, is to the vehicle industry what Apple Inc has been for the mobile phone industry. It’s tossed out what people think of as being a car.

Its “disruptive innovation” is reflected mainly in its product and business model. Tesla produces battery-powered electric cars. It provides car owners with a free battery-charging service through a nationwide network of solar-powered charging stations.

Unlike buyers of conventional cars that rely on massive dealer networks, Tesla consumers can go to its direct sales stores for test drives, place orders online and enjoy cloud-based after-sale service.

Chinese electric car companies don’t lag too far behind Tesla in terms of technology, Gong said. On the contrary, a few companies such as Shenzhen-based BYD Auto Co Ltd have developed an edge in some electric car-related technologies. What they lack, according to Gong, is a “revolutionary” aspect to their products and the will to pursue an “extreme” consumer experience.

Companies do not necessarily have to be “revolutionary” to be successful. Most companies succeed as they follow well-established paths and improve their products incrementally. In this regard, Gong said it’s “not fair” to compare BYD and Tesla because they are totally different companies.

“It is difficult to compare Tesla with any other company because it is really disruptive, in its business model and product,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Chinese companies haven’t got a chance. Chinese enterprises are rapidly catching up with their Western competitors in many fields. Contrary to popular perception, there is little difference in the mobile Internet field, said Gong, who completed a doctoral degree in the United States and taught at the University of California, Irvine before joining CEIBS.

“The mobile Internet industry in China is so developed that I believe it could soon export some innovation to the rest of the world,” Gong said. “So far, Chinese entrepreneurs have excelled at application-oriented fields, such as the mobile Internet and electric cars. But if you look at fields that are more closely related to basic science, such as medicine, there is a huge gap with the US.”

Behind China’s vibrant technology, media and telecommunication sector, Gong said, are tens of thousands of private equity and venture capital firms, as well as millions of entrepreneurs who aspire to be tomorrow’s Elon Musk (chief executive officer of Tesla).

China’s VC model is copied from Silicon Valley, so both extensively focus on the TMT sector. That focus has offered a good financing environment for entrepreneurs in that particular sector, but it’s a much less friendly environment for other industries, according to Gong.

“In China’s TMT sector, the problem is not lack of money but a lack of creative ideas. China’s social enterprises face a much tougher environment,” he said. “In Silicon Valley, nearly a quarter of the venture capital funds have gone into social enterprises, but here the share is minor.

“If you also consider charitable foundations and crowdfunding in the US, which support social enterprises, the gap is huge.”

Another potential risk of VCs’ focus on TMT in China is that too many entrepreneurs might be tempted to join this field despite lacking the passion and resources, Gong said.

“So for entrepreneurs, it is important to care about what VCs care about, but not to follow them blindly. You can’t dance to the VC firms’ beat,” he added.

But Gong is no pessimist when it comes to China’s entrepreneurship. He said his interaction with domestic entrepreneurs convinced him that the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit is high.

Cultural factors are also on China’s side, he said, because “no fear of making mistakes”, a vital trait for entrepreneurs, is much more prevalent here than in other East Asian nations.

“You look at any entrepreneurship index, and you find China is among the highest in the world. This is a country full of passion for entrepreneurship. I see no sign that the fever is waning. Quite the opposite,” he said.

The only factor that may hinder this innovative impulse, according to Gong, is government regulation in many industries. China’s most dynamic sectors are also those least regulated, and there’s a good reason for that.

More Chinese companies choose US as destination to go public

A senior vice president with NYSE Euronex says that more and more Chinese enterprises are attracted to do initial public offering (IPO) in the United States and predicts that around 15 to 20 of them could go public in the States this year.

“What I’ve seen is a nice building process from two years ago when we only had two IPOs. One of them VIP (Vipshop Holdings Limited) was listed here and did extremely well,” said David A. Ethridge, senior vice president and head of the Capital Markets Group at NYSE Euronext, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Shares of Vipshop, an online discount retailer, were traded at around 165 U.S. dollars per share Monday, compared to 6.50 dollars per share since it announced its IPO in March 2012. China’s social gaming portal YY Inc., which was listed on Nasdaq in November 2012, also saw its shares surge to around 56 dollars per share from its IPO price of 10.50 dollars apiece.

Two things happened to increase the likelihood of companies coming from China, Ethridge said.

“One was the public capital markets in the U.S. were very strong,” he said. The major U.S. stock indices traded up 25 percent or more during 2013, which is very helpful to all IPOs and certainly helpful to the technology sector with most of the companies coming from China in the technology arena, he explained.

“The second thing that happened was the Chinese companies that were already public were trading up,” which helped investors feeling positive about these IPOs coming from China, he said.

Ethridge said he doesn’t believe accounting concerns should be an issue today with Chinese companies. “They’ve got first-class, world-class advisors around them.”

“As we came into 2014, you saw a lot more people thinking positively about the IPO market in the United States, and likewise, you saw the same thing in China,” Ethridge said. “I think it will obviously depend on whether the IPO windows are there and if you are confident about launching (IPOs).”

So far, there have been seven Chinese companies having listed their shares in the U.S. stock market.

China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. filed its IPO in the United States on May 6. It is expected to be one of the largest stock listings in history.

“So I feel good about the way the market looks right now,” Ethridge said.

Ethridge believes that the technology sector is expected to see the most Chinese companies’ IPOs this year.

“If we are going to use the past as a harbinger of what we’ll see in the future, then you have to say will be technology companies. Most of the companies we’ve seen from China have been technology-oriented, many of them internet-oriented. And so I would expect the same,” he said.

Ethridge said one piece of advice he would give to Chinese companies planning to list stocks in the U.S. market is that “they need to be able to project their result and tell others how they will do in terms of their revenue profitability, and do it with confidence, and then actually beat those numbers.”

Ethridge said that U.S. investors welcome Chinese companies ” very much” judging from the growing number of China-based companies that went public in the U.S., their valuation and extraordinary performance after their IPOs.

“For the public investor, to see a country the size of China and that kind of growth rate on top of it is astounding, and I think that is always in the back of their mind,” he said. “The question is will the company execute and how do they take advantage of that growth rate.”

China’s changes continue to dazzle Western world

Humphrey Hawksley says over the years China has achieved tremendous economic growth.

Country is achieving growth in its own way, says BBC correspondent

People in the West still have not “got their heads around” the astonishing changes in China over the past 20 years, a leading BBC foreign correspondent says.

“The difference between China (then and now), in my view, is quite confusing to the West,” says Humphrey Hawksley, who set up the BBC’s bureau in Beijing in 1994.

Nevertheless, the “image of China in the Western eye has shifted in recent years from a mysterious developing country to an economic power closely intertwined with the global economy”, he says.

Hawksley recalls his early days of reporting in China when it was difficult to get editors interested in stories that were not linked to the West’s criticism of the country’s lack of Western-style democracy.

But over the years China has achieved tremendous economic growth, brought a large proportion of its population out of poverty and shown the world that those things can be achieved without Western-style democracy. China is “winning the game”, he says.

By that he means that for other emerging economies China has presented an alternative model of achieving economic growth, which is often the thing they are looking for.

“In my travels around the world, in the poorest parts of Africa or Latin America, people want their children to be safe, they want a clinic to be nearby, they want a road. They don’t want ‘isms’, which are all mechanisms to deliver those things.”

Though China’s economic success is amazing, he says, he is not entirely surprised, having got to know some of the country’s political leaders in the 1990s.

One memorable figure for him is Zhu Rongji, who served as mayor of Shanghai between 1987 and 1991, during which time Hawksley interviewed him.

“In his office, he had a big map of Shanghai, which he put on the floor. We were all leaning on the floor, and he said, ‘We’re going to do this and that, and by 2020 we’re going to have a better infrastructure like New York’.”

Zhu’s determination and attention to detail persuaded Hawksley that he was capable of transforming China’s economy. Zhu later became the country’s vice-premier and later premier, from 1998 to 2003.

Although Hawksley expected huge growth in Shanghai, he was astounded by the transformation when he saw it.

“I remember some years back flying into Pudong Airport, there is a six or eight lane highway, and all those very wacky buildings, and you think ‘My God, this is going to be a fantastic city in 20 years, 50 years, or a hundred years.'”

For a country emerging from poverty, its infrastructure boom symbolizes hope for a better life, and a sense of purpose and future, he says.

“So if you’re the poorest of the poor, and you wake up to see a skyscraper, and new airport, you can think you’re a part of a system that will deliver it for you.”

The turning point of the West’s perception of China was the 2008 financial crisis, he says, when China fought against the crisis side by side with Western countries and won respect from them.

“During the 2008 financial crisis, it was Western institutions that were going down. China could have taken advantage of that and used it to weaken the West because it had the US treasury bonds, but it didn’t do that. It could have gone the other way, but it didn’t.

“It brought the realization to those in the West that China could be ‘a very mature ally in times like this, and the deals could be done, and it was all pushing forward the Western world’s economy’.”

That realization has resulted in the West dealing with China as an important economic power, and it is increasingly acceptable for Western leaders to talk to Chinese leaders about trade and investment without having to always bring up the topic of “democracy”, he says.

Having closely witnessed China’s economic miracle, Hawksley says strong government intervention in infrastructure development and manufacturing is an important aspect of China’s success.

Both aspects of the Chinese economy required significant government direction because a lot of China’s infrastructure delivery is built in anticipation of future market demand, and China’s manufacturing growth was facilitated by a favorable exchange rate to encourage exports. These could not be achieved by the private sector alone.

“Essentially China became the factory for the world. It created jobs for everybody, and there is a spread of wealth coupled with infrastructure growth. You wake up in the morning, and realize you can go on a better train, or get better seats, and that means a lot to many people.”

This kind of attitude is especially inspiring for other emerging countries like those in Africa, where China has been welcomed as a partner in building infrastructure.

“What the Chinese say is that they will build a road, a stadium, and they don’t tie it with anything else. The engineers go and do that, whereas Western aid is tied with ‘human rights and democracy’.”

From his experience in Africa, Hawksley has witnessed countries where global institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have helped for a long time, and yet there are still no roads between two big towns because large institutions are often inefficient in dealing with practical matters.

“All the people want is for the roads to be built, so that (their) children can go to the hospital, and the magistrate can go to court. If you don’t build your road, everything breaks down.”

Hawksley joined the BBC in 1981. Since the early 1990s he has traveled in China frequently on assignment. When he set up the BBC’s Beijing bureau it consisted of just him and a cameraman, but together they reported many memorable stories.

China in those days was still mysterious to many people, partly a result, Hawksley believes, of the country having a long history and a rich culture, and partly a result of China experts in the West making out that the country is more mysterious than it really is to strengthen their credentials and worth.

“Western people who spend years studying Chinese want to keep the mystery up. You could draw mystery around everything you want, but essentially it is not there.”

Hawksley says one example is guanxi, which means social connections and is a concept Westerners often talk about to explain why many things are done so differently in China. But essentially social connections help in getting things done in any country, he says.

In recent years the growth of Western media in China has also helped demystify China, giving Western audiences a more objective and multifaceted view of China, Hawksley says.

“China now has more foreign press going there, and it has its own press doing quite good investigations. (The media are) a lot freer than 20 years ago.”

Facebook Considering New Sales Office in China

Facebook (FB) is considering opening a new office in Beijing, despite the fact that the service has been blocked by censors in mainland China since 2009.

“Chinese exporters and developers are finding Facebook is an excellent way for them to reach customers outside China,” a spokesperson said.

“Today, our sales team in Hong Kong is supporting these Chinese businesses, but because of the rapid growth these businesses are achieving by using Facebook, we are of course exploring ways that we can provide even more support locally and may consider having a sales office in China in the future.”

Given the company is only mulling the idea, the timing of any such move and potential staffing remains unclear. Facebook currently operates an office in Hong Kong, where the social network is available to users.

“In the near term, Chinese companies want to use Facebook to advertise to customers in markets like Indonesia in Southeast Asia where Facebook is strong, despite rising competition from Tencent’s WeChat,” said Shaun Rein, managing director of the Shanghai-based China Market Research.

Facebook’s attempt to re-enter China comes 9 months after Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg traveled to Beijing to meet with Cai Mingzhao, head of China’s State Council Information Office, the government agency that oversees internet regulation. CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited China on a private trip in December 2010.

“[Mark] Zuckerberg and Sandberg have been much smarter in dealing with the Chinese government than Google’s executives who were far too arrogant and contentious,” Rein says, citing Google’s exit from mainland China in 2010 over disagreements on search censorship.

However, the likelihood of Facebook becoming available within the Great Firewall anytime soon is small, with instability rippling through the region from the western region of Xinjiang to the eastern city of Hangzhou.

China remains one of the largest untapped markets for Facebook. According to its most recent earnings report, Facebook earned $354 million in revenue from Asia in the first quarter of 2014. China currently has 618 million internet users, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

Since its 2009 ban, Facebook’s Chinese competitors Renren, Sina, Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat have soared in popularity.

Twitter (TWTR) and Google’s (GOOG) YouTube are also blocked in China, among many other websites. However, some U.S. social media firms have managed to remain active. LinkedIn (LNKD), which is not blocked, broadened its business in February and launched a Chinese-language site. CEO Jeff Weiner acknowledged in a statement that working amid censors “raises difficult questions but it is clear to us that the decision to proceed is the right one.”

Technology becoming new economic engine of Chengdu

Wang Fengde (second from right), vice-director of China Bluestar Chengrand Chemical Co Ltd, tests products together with researchers.

Transformed over two decades from China’s biggest base for heavy industry in the western region, Chengdu is now thriving with a modern economy built on high-technology industries that are driving its growth and providing a window on its innovative strength.

Many of these opportunities come from China’s national strategy of building the Silk Road economic belt, as well as soaring consumption power and the application of various advanced technologies.

Eager to gain higher profits from exports, Chengdu has moved toward a low-carbon, high-tech economy by curbing overcapacity and reducing the scale of heavy and energy-intensive industries on the one hand, while on the other encouraging high-tech industries to accelerate the speed of innovation and talent recruitment.

He Li, director of Chengdu’s development and reform commission, said that an increasing number of domestic and international companies are building new manufacturing facilities for high-tech products, research centers and logistics hubs in Chengdu. Thus, the city is preparing to scale up efforts to improve services for strategic emerging industries and productive service sectors over the next five years.

“High-end industries, including next-generation information technology, biotechnology, precision machinery manufacturing, energy conservation and environmental protection, plus financial and business services, will further upgrade the competitiveness and innovative capacity of Chengdu and Sichuan province as a whole,” He said.

The Chengdu government in February announced an overall strategy of reform, innovation, transformation and upgrading, and optimized its five strategies to push forward the city’s industrial transformation and optimize the structure of high-tech industries, environmental investment, and urban and rural planning.

“We are also providing high-tech companies in incubators with access to public research facilities, helping them explore the market and offering them help in human resources as well as financing. Office space, dormitories and apartments for their employees can also be arranged,” said He.

To build an efficient public service platform for more than 20,000 high-tech companies in the city, different government divisions such as the finance bureau and science and technology bureau have formulated subsidies and stimulus policies to encourage innovative activities.

Sun Ming, chairwoman of the Chengdu Federation of Industry and Commerce, said another component driving development is the central government’s intention to promote urbanization and narrow the gap between the more industrial coastal cities and the underdeveloped interior and western frontier regions.

“Because the future of Chengdu’s economy will be decided by innovative breakthroughs in high-tech industries, local universities and vocational colleges have been quick to adjust their curricula to follow trends in the city’s changing job market and produce talented people with practical skills to fit into the teams in various small and medium-sized companies,” said Sun.

“This new economic shift has already made an impressive change, helping Chengdu’s high-tech companies reach more new marketplaces. They have managed well to ship their products to international and domestic destinations through well-developed international rail freight systems and air routes, as well as highways, in recent years,” Sun said.

China Bluestar Chengrand Chemical Co Ltd, which makes chemical materials for civilian and military use, is one of many Chengdu companies that reflect this trend. It expects to raise production capacity of para-aramid fiber by 10,000 metric tons next year.

The company now produces 1,000 tons of the strong, heat-resistant fiber annually. It is widely used in the aerospace industry – particularly to produce ballistic-rated body armor – bicycle tires, asbestos substitutes and disaster rescue equipment.

Supported by favorable policies such as tax cuts and new land use rights offered by the Chengdu government, as well as qualified local university graduates, Bluestar Chengrand has begun research on the project’s second phase. It plans to invest about 3 billion yuan ($486 million) in Chengdu to establish a production line for para-aramid and equipment to manufacture composite materials.

The expansion, with operations expected to start in 2015, will make the company the third-largest producer of para-aramid in the world after Wilmington, Delaware-based E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co and Japan’s Teijin Ltd, Wang Fengde, vice-director of Bluestar Chengrand, said.

“Para-aramid fiber is used in the production of components for automobiles, airplanes and high-speed trains, of which western China produces a lot,” Wang said. “We will keep investing 10-15 percent of our annual sales into research and development every year, and we’ll also consider adding several new research labs and a department in Chengdu.”

The Chengdu-based company has received a high volume of orders and inquiries for the use of various new materials from traditional domestic factories in recent years, Wang said. They are interested in upgrading the technical content of their products. Interest has come from shipyards, garment factories, shoe manufacturers and tire producers in the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai Bay region.

Bluestar Chengrand’s revenue rose to 530 million yuan in 2013, up 20 percent from the previous year. It has over 500 employees, including 200 scientists and researchers in different departments. It has sold para-aramid to countries including Germany, France, Turkey, Spain and Italy last year, at relatively competitive prices.

Yahoo! to recruit new blood after student protest

Yahoo! will recruit 100 local employees after witnessing the younger generation’s potential amid the Sunflower Movement, Yahoo! Inc. Asia-Pacific region Senior Vice President Rose Tsou said yesterday.

This has been the second positive response from the business world following conclusion of the Sunflower Movement, the protest led by students who occupied the Legislative Yuan to show their disapproval of the Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement.

Tsou said that the Sunflower Movement provided a lot inspiration for her firm, especially after seeing how local students successfully used the Internet to generate tremendous energy.

That is an ability previous generations didn’t have, Tsou said.

When all industries are facing the impact of Internet development, this could prove to be either the best or most challenging era for young people, she added.

Tsou said that Yahoo! Inc. will be looking for talents from different fields, including advertisement, engineering and product planning.

According to the company, a summer internship will be launched to recruit roughly 20 people in order to form an elite team.

The company added that the interns will receive salary and benefits enjoyed by fulltime employees, but their project will also be evaluated based on standards for fulltime employees as well.

Tsou said that the Internet industry needs to keep improving in order to avoid being eliminated, and that Yahoo Inc. aims to become the largest company in the world.

According to Tsou, the company currently has over 1,000 employees in Taiwan, which makes it the largest Internet company on the island, and over half of its employees are between the ages of 25 and 34.

Tsou said that Yahoo Inc. has always been looking for people who can communicate and work well with others, adding that the company hopes to find young people who can think independently and perform well.

Huang An-chieh, chairman of the Accton Technology Corporation, recently said that the Sunflower Movement gave him the courage to reflect upon himself, prompting him to resign in order to allow others to take over.

Women on Boards in Taiwan

Taipei Financial Center Corp. Chairwoman Christina Sung became the first head of the newly established Women on Boards, aiming to push for new laws that will increase the number of female chief executives.

According to Sung, only 14 percent of chief executives in publicly traded companies are women.

Nine officials, scholars and business leaders also joined the organization, including Tsou, Pacific Sogo Chairwoman Huang Ching-wen and L’Oreal Taiwan Chairwoman Amy Chen.