Recruiting in China

Nearly 73 percent of Taiwan's young men and women who graduated from universities or colleges this summer would not mind crossing the Taiwan Strait to work in China, the 1111 job bank quoted the results of a recent poll as indicating Tuesday.

Graduates who majored in business management, finance and economics topped the list of China-bound aspirants, the poll found.

Shanghai is the top choice in terms of location, with 73.08 percent of the new graduates who responded to the poll saying they would prefer to work there, followed by Hong Kong (46.15 percent) , Beijing (42.79 percent) , Guangzhou (21.15 percent) and Suzhou-Hangzhou (20.19 percent), according to the poll.

Work in the information technology sector is the most coveted job of the respondents, followed by trade and goods and services distribution (30.29 percent) , and industrial and business services (23.08 percent), the results show.

Some 63.46 percent of the respondents cited China "promising to become the world's leading market" as the major reason for their willingness to work there, while 62.5 percent said they want to work in China to expand their experience and 44.23 percent said working in China would help broaden their global perspective, according to the poll.

A total of 80.29 percent of the first-time job seekers who do not mind working in China said they expect a higher salary working in China than they could earn in Taiwan, at roughly NT$43,600 (US$1,364) per month, according to the poll.

The 1111 job bank conducted the survey between June 22 and July 5. It received 1,174 valid samples and had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 2.86 percentage points. (By Opal Cheng and Deborah Kuo) ENDITEM/J

The Great Recession rolls on, but it’s not too early to single out the major powers that have come through the wreckage in the best shape. They are the ones the other major nations implore for help — to bail out weaker economies, to diminish their dominance of the world’s production and start consuming more themselves. There are just two such nations: China and Germany.

Global unemployment might remain stratospheric, but in China, long-suppressed wages are finally increasing for millions of industrial workers. China’s stimulus — effectively the world’s largest — has funded bullet trains, airports and wind turbines. In Germany, unemployment has been running a point or two below ours, and exports remain high. Thanks to its favorable trade balance, Germany’s finances are the strongest in Europe, which is why German monetary guarantees have been key to the future of both Greece and the euro.

Germany and China don’t have a lot in common. Germany has a mature economy and is a stultifyingly stable democracy. China has a rising economy and remains disturbingly authoritarian. What sets them apart from the world’s other major powers, purely and simply, is manufacturing. Their predominantly industrial economies meet their own needs and those of other nations, and have made them flourish while others flounder.

This used to be true of United States, too. In 1960, manufacturing accounted for a quarter of our gross domestic product and employed 26 percent of the labor force. Today, manufacturing has shriveled to 11 percent of GDP and employs a kindred percentage of the workforce.

For the past three decades, with few exceptions, America’s CEOs, financiers, establishment economists and editorialists assured us that the transition from a manufacturing to a post-industrial economy was both inevitable and positive: American workers would move to more productive jobs, and the nation’s financial security would only grow.

But after rising steadily during the quarter-century following World War II, wages have stagnated since the manufacturing sector began to contract.

Increasingly, it’s our most productive jobs that are being offshored. Until 2001, the United States exported more advanced technology than it imported, but since then, as Clyde Prestowitz reports in “The Betrayal of American Prosperity,” his persuasive new book on the need for an American industrial policy, we’ve been running annual high-tech deficits that reached $61 billion in 2008. Worse yet, as we lose manufacturing, which employed 63 percent of our scientists and engineers in 2007, we lose many of our most valuable professionals. Last year, reported Business Week, the number of employed scientists and engineers fell 6.3 percent while overall employment fell 4.1 percent.

Most Americans, I suspect, believe we’re losing manufacturing because we can’t compete against cheap Chinese labor. But Germany has remained a manufacturing giant notwithstanding the rise of East Asia, making high-end products with a workforce that is more unionized and better paid than ours. German exports came to $1.1 trillion in 2009 — roughly $125 billion more than we exported, though there are just 82 million Germans to our 310 million Americans. Germany’s yearly trade balance went from a deficit of $6 billion in 1998 to a surplus of $267 billion in 2008 — the same year the United States ran a trade deficit of $569 billion. Over those same 10 years, Germany’s annual growth rate per capita exceeded ours.

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Why Germany and China are winning
MICHAEL OSBUN / Tribune Media Services

By HAROLD MEYERSON

Published: Monday, July 5, 2010 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, July 2, 2010 at 6:05 p.m.

( page 3 of 3 )

The Great Recession rolls on, but it’s not too early to single out the major powers that have come through the wreckage in the best shape. They are the ones the other major nations implore for help — to bail out weaker economies, to diminish their dominance of the world’s production and start consuming more themselves. There are just two such nations: China and Germany.

Global unemployment might remain stratospheric, but in China, long-suppressed wages are finally increasing for millions of industrial workers. China’s stimulus — effectively the world’s largest — has funded bullet trains, airports and wind turbines. In Germany, unemployment has been running a point or two below ours, and exports remain high. Thanks to its favorable trade balance, Germany’s finances are the strongest in Europe, which is why German monetary guarantees have been key to the future of both Greece and the euro.

Germany and China don’t have a lot in common. Germany has a mature economy and is a stultifyingly stable democracy. China has a rising economy and remains disturbingly authoritarian. What sets them apart from the world’s other major powers, purely and simply, is manufacturing. Their predominantly industrial economies meet their own needs and those of other nations, and have made them flourish while others flounder.

This used to be true of United States, too. In 1960, manufacturing accounted for a quarter of our gross domestic product and employed 26 percent of the labor force. Today, manufacturing has shriveled to 11 percent of GDP and employs a kindred percentage of the workforce.

For the past three decades, with few exceptions, America’s CEOs, financiers, establishment economists and editorialists assured us that the transition from a manufacturing to a post-industrial economy was both inevitable and positive: American workers would move to more productive jobs, and the nation’s financial security would only grow.

But after rising steadily during the quarter-century following World War II, wages have stagnated since the manufacturing sector began to contract.

Increasingly, it’s our most productive jobs that are being offshored. Until 2001, the United States exported more advanced technology than it imported, but since then, as Clyde Prestowitz reports in “The Betrayal of American Prosperity,” his persuasive new book on the need for an American industrial policy, we’ve been running annual high-tech deficits that reached $61 billion in 2008. Worse yet, as we lose manufacturing, which employed 63 percent of our scientists and engineers in 2007, we lose many of our most valuable professionals. Last year, reported Business Week, the number of employed scientists and engineers fell 6.3 percent while overall employment fell 4.1 percent.

Most Americans, I suspect, believe we’re losing manufacturing because we can’t compete against cheap Chinese labor. But Germany has remained a manufacturing giant notwithstanding the rise of East Asia, making high-end products with a workforce that is more unionized and better paid than ours. German exports came to $1.1 trillion in 2009 — roughly $125 billion more than we exported, though there are just 82 million Germans to our 310 million Americans. Germany’s yearly trade balance went from a deficit of $6 billion in 1998 to a surplus of $267 billion in 2008 — the same year the United States ran a trade deficit of $569 billion. Over those same 10 years, Germany’s annual growth rate per capita exceeded ours.

Germany has increased its edge in world-class manufacturing even as we have squandered ours because its model of capitalism is superior to our own. For one thing, its financial sector serves the larger economy, not just itself. The typical German company has a long-term relationship with a single bank — and for the smaller manufacturers that are the backbone of the German economy, those relationships are likely with one of Germany’s 431 savings banks, each of them a local institution with a municipally appointed board, that shun capital markets and invest their depositors’ savings in upgrading local enterprises. By American banking standards, the savings banks are incredibly dull. But they didn’t lose money in the financial panic of 2008 and have financed an industrial sector that makes ours look anemic by comparison.

So even as Germany and China have been busily building, and selling us, high-speed trains, photovoltaic cells and lithium-ion batteries, we’ve spent the past decade, at the direction of our CEOs and bankers, shuttering 50,000 factories and springing credit-default swaps on an unsuspecting world. That’s not to say our CEOs and bankers are conscious agents of foreign powers. But given what they’ve done to America, they might as well have been.

By HAROLD MEYERSON

HONG KONG (Dow Jones)--Chinese search engine company Baidu Inc. (BIDU) said Wednesday it is looking to hire 30 software engineers from the U.S. next month to help make the company more innovative as it seeks to take advantage of rival Google Inc.'s (GOOG) shrinking participation in China.

Baidu is set to gain market share in China from Google as the Chinese government objects to Google's recent strategy of redirecting Chinese users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong and threatened the U.S. company with the loss of its license.

Kaiser Kuo, a company spokesman, said Baidu, China's biggest search engine, will hold a job fair in Milpitas, Calif., and is aiming to hire mid-level to senior engineers.

"Baidu believes that talent is the key to our success as a company, and we go wherever the best talent can be found, whether here in China or in Silicon Valley," said Zheng Bin, human resources director at Baidu, in a statement.

Baidu's hiring in the U.S. market underscores the need for more experienced engineers in China. Analysts say having insufficient number of engineers means companies will fall behind other rivals as competition intensifies in the Internet space.

"It's good to see Baidu taking initiatives to expand its talent pool and speed up the company's technology development. New technology is vital for its long-term growth," said Elinor Leung, an analyst at CLSA.

Baidu currently employs about 2,500 engineers. It has research and development centers in Beijing and Shanghai.

According to figures from Analysys International, Google's market share in China declined to 31% in the first quarter of this year from 35.6% in the previous quarter, with Baidu benefiting at Google's expense.

Baidu reported in February its fourth-quarter earnings rose 48% to CNY427.9 million on a 40% increase in revenue to CNY1.26 billion.

SHANGHAI — General Motors Co. says its first-half sales of vehicles in China overtook the U.S. for the first time amid a fitful recovery in American demand.

The 1.21 million GM-brand vehicles sold in China in January to June — a near 50 percent gain over a year earlier — compared with 1.07 million sold in the U.S. market, according to figures released separately by GM's U.S. and international headquarters.

The shift reflects GM's growing reliance on stronger growth in emerging markets, especially China, to offset sluggish sales back home.

The recovery in U.S. auto sales this year has been fitful, with month-to-month sales falling as many times as they rose. Sales of GM's four core brands rose 36 percent in the first half of the year over a year earlier in the U.S., but were down 12 percent in June from the month before, at 195,000, the company said.

In China, where first half auto sales figures for the entire industry are not due until next week, demand has begun to moderate but remains strong. Passenger car sales rose 55 percent in January-May to 5.7 million vehicles, while total vehicle sales rose 53 percent to 7.6 million.

Last year, China sped past the U.S. to become the world's largest auto market, with 13.6 million vehicles sold, as consumers with rising incomes responded to government tax cuts and subsidies aimed at encouraging purchases of small, energy efficient vehicles.

By contrast, U.S. sales of cars and light trucks plunged 21 percent in 2009 to 10.4 million as a shaky economy kept buyers away from showrooms.

Last year, GM's global sales overtook the home market as U.S. demand languished. Sales in China by GM and its partners surged 67 percent over a year earlier to a record 1.8 million vehicles. But while GM's U.S. sales fell 30 percent from a year earlier, they still exceeded its China sales at 2.08 million units.

General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt said it is getting harder for foreign companies to do business in China, and that the Obama administration hasn't done as much as its predecessors to develop ties to the business community, people who heard his comments said Thursday.

His remarks, made Wednesday night at a private dinner in Rome for Italian business leaders, GE executives and others, echoed concerns Mr. Immelt has expressed before about barriers to U.S. exports and links between business and government.

But his words appeared to show a growing irritation with China, which Mr. Immelt said is increasingly developing its own technology that competes with U.S. exports, according to a person who heard him speak. "Immelt expressed anger at China, because it's trying to suck technology away," this person said.

GE said Mr. Immelt was in transit, and not available for comment.

The company, however, said its approach to China hasn't changed. "There is no change to our strategy for or in China, which as Jeff has said many times is an important and attractive market for GE," said Anne Eisele, a spokeswoman for the Fairfield, Conn.-based conglomerate.

GE, a sponsor of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, has pinned much of its hopes for growth on Chinese markets. GE has 13,000 employees in China and has cut deals there to share technology in the areas of aviation, reducing pollution from coal, and rail locomotives.
China Real Time.

Around the time GE opened a new technology center in Shanghai in August of 2008, Mr. Immelt said GE expected to double its business in China to $10 billion by 2010. But the company appears behind schedule in reaching that target, with China revenue of about $5.3 billion in 2009, up from $4.7 billion in 2008.

Shifting to relations with governments, Mr. Immelt said Wednesday night that the Obama administration has been distracted by the economic crisis and its legislative priorities from developing the ties with business seen under the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The White House declined to comment.

Mr. Immelt enjoyed a warm relationship with President Barack Obama after the 2008 election, and was named to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a bipartisan panel of industrial, finance and union leaders. Mr. Immelt was a leading corporate supporter of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, praising it in op-ed pieces and speeches.

In recent months, though, Mr. Immelt has said the administration needs to do more to help U.S. manufacturers sell their goods in foreign markets. Speaking in May at the 92nd Street Y in New York, he said he felt outgunned in terms of political support when bidding against French and South Korean companies for a nuclear-reactor contract in Dubai. That $20 billion contract was ultimately won by a Korean consortium

Mr. Immelt's remarks from the Rome gathering were reported earlier by the Financial Times.

One attendee said the chief executive "used the word 'concern' a lot," indicating challenges as companies try to put the recession behind them. "His speech was gloomy," this person said. "He seemed worried about business conditions across the board. And at the same time, he was using those observations to highlight that GE was doing well in spite of the difficulties."

Mr. Immelt said GE's second-quarter results won't be bad. The company reported in April that its first-quarter profit fell 31% from a year earlier to $1.95 billion on revenue of $36.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect GE to report $38.7 billion in revenue for the second quarter.

By JENNIFER CLARK And PAUL GLADER

China's central authorities have set down a more open policy to attract top-notch foreign talents to help promote the economic and social development and global competitiveness of the nation.

According to the newly unveiled National Medium and Long-term Talent Development Plan (2010-2020), the government will work out favorable policies in terms of taxation, insurance, housing, children and spouse settlement, career development, research projects, and government awards for high-calibre overseas talents who are willing to work in China.

Furthermore, the government will also improve the system for giving permanent residence rights to foreigners, explore the potential of a skilled migration program, and work out measures to ensure a talent supply, discovery and appraisal system.

The national plan, a blueprint for creating a highly skilled national work force over the next decade, aims to transform the country from being "labor-rich to talent-intensive."

Wang Huiyao, vice chairman of Beijing-based China Western Returned Scholars Association, said, "The measures outlined are very attractive. They've touched upon various concerns of talents from overseas including personal and career needs."

"The plan is practical and concrete compared with previous documents," said Wang, who help draft the plan.

A program to hire 1,000 overseas top-notch specialists initiated in late 2008 was also incorporated into the new plan as one of the 12 key projects to be completed over the next ten years.

By May this year, 662 people have been recruited under the program, which gives priority to leading scientists who are able to make breakthroughs in key technologies, develop high-tech industries and lead new research areas.

Xiao Mingzheng, director of the Human Resource Development and Management Research Center at Peking University said, "It's preferable to import talents rather than capital or technology."

"As China strives to adjust its economic growth pattern, it has become more important for it to tap others' 'brains'," he said.

"The new policies reflect China's open attitude to personnel recruitment - that is, the country not only exports talents to serve the world but also enables foreign talents to serve China's development," he said.

China's efforts to attract overseas talents have gone beyond the central government level.

The country recruited about 480,000 talents from foreign countries, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan last year, according to the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.

And about 50,000 Chinese officials and professionals went overseas for various training programs last year.

Li Yuanchao, head of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said earlier this year, "Top-notch talents are crucial for improving the core competitiveness of a country, a region, and a company."

"Not only should the central government earnestly carry out its talent recruitment program. Local governments should also develop their own programs to create conditions to allow talents to achieve," he said.