Recruiting in China

Last year, Phoebe Sun began to feel that her native Taiwan was too small for her to develop her career as an advertising executive.

She had been working in Taipei since graduating from business school in 2001 and wanted to try somewhere new.

After going to mainland China for the first time last summer, the 30-year-old decided she wanted to work there.

So she applied for a job in Beijing, was hired and moved to the city last December, thus joining the growing number of Taiwanese who go to the mainland in search of better career prospects.

"The Chinese market is huge and full of opportunities. I was hoping to gain some experience that I would not be able to get in Taipei," says Ms Sun.

China has long been a popular place for Taiwanese to set up business because of its proximity and low cost-base. More than 1m Taiwanese now live in mainland China, according to estimates by Hung Hxi-yao, deputy secretary general of the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland (ATIEM).

A number of Taiwanese companies, in sectors such as manufacturing and semiconductors, also have transferred their operations from the island state to China, where they can save on costs and develop their businesses on a bigger scale.

Some companies in China, meanwhile, like to hire Taiwanese because they speak the same language and are culturally very similar.

"Taiwan was once ruled by the Japanese, who have very high loyalty to their companies and respect seniority. We have learnt these qualities from them and they are what many Chinese employers look for," says Alex Hsu, general manager of MGR Search & Selection (Pasona Group), a Taipei-based recruitment firm.

For multinational companies in China, which usually have top-level executives relocated from other countries and large numbers of mainland graduates for junior posts, Taiwanese employees can fill a wide gap at the middle management level.

Taiwan is the biggest source of foreign workers for Chinese employers, according to a 2008 survey by Manpower, the international employment services company.

"One of our surveys shows that the top three kinds of job in which foreign talent is most needed in China are senior executives, middle management and engineers. Taiwan has them all. It's simply a question of supply and demand," says Lucille Wu, managing director of Manpower Greater China.

Against a backdrop of warming relations between Beijing and Taipei, ATIEM's Mr Hung expects the mainland's population of Taiwanese expatriates to reach 1.5m by the end of the year.

Since Ma Ying-jeou became Taiwan's president in May, his administration has overseen the resumption of direct air links with China, partly removed restrictions on Taiwanese companies' investments in China, and liberalised cross-Strait investments.

"Taiwan and China are becoming closer and closer since Mr Ma took over. A lot of Taiwanese feel they are Chinese too," says Beijing-based Mr Hung. "With China being such an important economy, it's only natural for them to want to work here."

According to a recent survey by 104 Job Bank, a Taiwanese headhunting agency, 45 per cent of jobseekers in Taiwan are interested in working in China. Nearly 70 per cent people say they are attracted by the potential of China's economy, which expanded 10.4 per cent in the first half of 2008.

Economic growth in Taiwan, meanwhile, is less than 5 per cent, which contributes to a subdued job market in the island state.

Although higher salary is not one of the factors cited in the survey, some people, especially those who work for multinational companies, do get paid more in China. MGR's Mr Hsu says a human resources manager who works for a US company in China could be paid one-third more than their counterpart in Taipei.

"Increasingly, many Taiwanese are being considered local hires in China. Many don't get expat packages any more" says Mr Hsu.

To make themselves even more attractive to Chinese companies, Taiwanese employees sometimes ask for lower salaries than other workers from the region, who often pay lower employment taxes at home. Income tax rates in Hong Kong and Singapore, for example, are up to 17 per cent and 20 per cent respectively, compared with 40 per cent in Taiwan and 45 per cent in mainland China.

"We find that Taiwanese expats do not request full expat packages and do not need to be tax-equalized, as opposed to Hong Kong and Singaporean candidates, who obviously enjoy much lower tax rates," says Andrew Chang, associate director at Michael Page, the recruitment firm, in Beijing.

Meanwhile, just as a larger numbers of Taiwanese and other foreign workers are moving to China, the country has also been nurturing its own talent.

But this does not mean that it is too late for those Taiwanese who want to try their luck on the mainland.

"Supply is growing but has not yet met demand. China still needs a lot of Taiwanese. It is never too late", says Ms Wu.