Recruiting in China

By LAURIE BURKITT, JOANN S. LUBLIN And DANA MATTIOLI
Updated Jan. 15, 2016 5:17 a.m. ET

BEIJING— General Electric Co. agreed to sell its appliance unit for $5.4 billion to Chinese manufacturer Haier Group, which is looking to expand its products into homes around the world.

GE and Haier announced the deal Friday, saying the companies will cooperate world-wide to expand their reach in health care, advanced manufacturing and the industrial sectors.

The deal will help Haier sell refrigerators, washing machines and other appliances that are already popular in China overseas after years of struggling to gain a stronger foothold in the U.S. and elsewhere. Haier said it will have the rights to use the GE brand for appliances for 40 years.

The acquisition also enables GE to focus on its industrial business—jet engines and power turbines instead of washing machines and even finance.

“Haier has a good track record of acquisitions and of managing brands,” GE’s chairman and chief executive officer Jeff Immelt said in a news release. “Haier has a stated focus to grow in the U.S., build their manufacturing presence here, and to invest further in the business.”

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Qingdao Haier Co., a Shanghai- listed company in which Haier owns 41%, will acquire the GE appliance unit, Haier said. It said the deal “establishes a model for cross-border investment and cooperation between China and the United States.”

The deal, which values GE Appliances at 10 times the last 12 months of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to GE, was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

It marks the third major overseas acquisition by Chinese companies this week.

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China’s Haier Nears Deal to Buy GE Appliance Business
A consortium of investors including China National Chemical Corp. on Sunday agreed to buy KraussMaffei Group for 925 million euros ($1 billion), one of the largest Chinese takeovers of a German company. Two days later, Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group Co. agreed to acquire production and finance company Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion in cash, the largest China-Hollywood deal to date.

GE has been running an auction for the century-old appliance business since it abandoned a $3.3 billion sale to Sweden’s Electrolux AB in December. The U.S. Justice Department had sued to block that transaction, saying the combination of the two companies would hurt competition for cooktops and ranges. Haier is unlikely to face the same antitrust hurdles as Electrolux because of its small presence in the U.S.

In seeking a fresh buyer, GE executives wanted “a better deal” than they had gotten from Electrolux, one person familiar with the matter said. GE also stands to receive a $175 million breakup fee from Electrolux.

The Chinese appliance maker outbid other foreign corporate bidders for the Louisville, Ky.-based business, according to a person close to the deal.

Haier has struggled to compete in the U.S. While it calls itself the biggest appliance maker in terms of unit sales, Haier is mainly known in the U.S. for niche products such as compact refrigerators and window air-conditioning units.

The privately held company has also been expanding its range of products and retail partners in the U.S. Last August, Haier said it would invest $72 million to expand its 15-year-old refrigerator plant in Camden, S.C.

The GE transaction, however, will vault the Chinese company past Electrolux and other rivals in the U.S. market for white goods, which is currently led by Whirlpool. Sales for the GE Appliances and Lighting division, of which appliances is the lion’s share, were $8.4 billion in 2014.

Haier held talks with GE in 2008 to buy the U.S. firm’s appliance unit. In 2010, a Haier executive said the company didn’t buy at the time because the price for the unit was too high. Haier also made an unsuccessful bid for Maytag Corp. in 2004, but lost out to Whirlpool.

Since then, Haier has been vying for more U.S. retail partners, tapping major advertising agencies in an effort to become a household name. Haier held a 29.8% market share of major household appliance sales in China last year, compared with 5.6% in the U.S., according to market research firm Euromonitor.

For Haier, which had $32.6 billion in revenue world-wide in 2014, growth overseas is critical. Profit margins from the company’s refrigerators and washing machines in China are razor-thin due to increased competition at home, where online shopping has sparked price wars, pushing down prices in the electronics and appliances sector.

Another drag on business is that fewer people in China are buying new homes and thus need fewer new appliances.

The deal will broaden Haier’s customer base and distribution channels. It will also sharpen its credibility in the U.S., where “Chinese brands are perceived as low quality,” said Klaus Meyer, a business professor at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

Based in China’s northeastern coastal city of Qingdao, Haier is one of China’s legacy state-owned enterprises. Haier’s chief executive, Zhang Ruimin, was the general manager when the company started in 1984 as a successor to a loss-making refrigerator factory that had been opened in 1949, when Chairman Mao Zedong founded modern China.

Mr. Zhang, now 67, has become somewhat of a legend in business circles back home, building a no-nonsense demeanor when he, as newly appointed chairman in 1985, grasped a sledgehammer, smashing a faulty refrigerator to demonstrate zero tolerance for shoddy products at the factory.

Within his first decade as chairman, he transformed Haier, creating China’s largest appliance maker and becoming the first businessman appointed to China’s Central Committee, one of the Communist Party’s highest decision-making bodies.

Mr. Zhang built the brand by investing in a cartoon in the 1990s called the “Haier Brothers,” creating mascots that generations in China came to recognize long after the airing of the more than 200 episodes. Today, Haier has become one of the China most valuable brands, worth $1.9 billion in 2015, according to media agencies Millward Brown and WPP, which calculated the value using the company’s financial data and consumer survey data.

GE Appliances will keep its headquarters in Louisville, Ky, the companies said.

Haier said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange if the deal ceases due to failure to obtain approvals from antitrust regulators, Chinese regulators or Qingdao Haier’s shareholders, Qingdao Haier will be required to pay $200 million to $400 million to GE as compensation.

GE’s assets Haier is acquiring had a book value of 1.84 billion dollars as of the end of 2014.

—Ted Mann in New York and Rose Yu in Shanghai contributed to this article.

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.

Huawei Technologies Co., which is struggling to break out of the mold of a Chinese company, is recruiting more Western executives and rolling out a long-term incentive program to attract foreign workers.

The moves come as the Shenzhen-based company expands aggressively overseas and tries to remake itself into a global brand. Huawei, which generates two-thirds of its revenue outside China, is now the world's second-largest supplier of telecommunications-network equipment after industry leader Ericsson. ERIC-B.SK -0.30%

Yet Huawei's senior executives are predominantly Chinese, and only about one-quarter of its 150,000 employees are non-Chinese nationals.

Huawei's fast growth in the telecom-equipment market has drawn criticism in the West.

A U.S. congressional report last year labeled the company a security threat and questioned whether it has close ties to the Chinese government. Similar concerns have been raised in Australia and the U.K. Huawei has denied the allegations.

To attract workers in India, where Huawei hires many engineers for its local research-and-development facility, the company earlier this year introduced an employee-benefit program modeled after its China share-ownership program. That program lets Chinese workers buy a stake in the company and profit when Huawei does well.

Huawei plans to roll out this benefit to other countries, said spokesman Roland Sladek. He declined to elaborate.

The move is significant because Huawei has called its Chinese share-ownership program a driver of the company's success. About 74,000 of the 110,000 Chinese nationals employed at Huawei are shareholders.

In India, Huawei employees become eligible after two years. But unlike its China program, overseas employees can't actually own a stake in the company.

Still, the program is likely to allow the company to "create a strong loyalty among the best talent" as it expands overseas, said Mr. Sladek, who joined Huawei last year from ST-Ericsson, a European joint venture of Ericsson and semiconductor-manufacturer STMicroelectronics STM +0.89% NV.

If Huawei is seen as an international firm, this could ease security concerns and give it greater access to local markets, said Sandy Shen, a Gartner Inc. research director based in Shanghai. "It's very important that they put on the face of a global company when they go into international markets."

Huawei's efforts to transform itself into a global company are becoming apparent at its Shenzhen headquarters.

Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and Westerners are among the 30,000 employees who work on the nearly square-mile campus. The campus offers Western restaurants serving steak, and an Indian and halal canteen with freshly made chapati flat breads.

CT Johnson, a 45-year-old U.S. finance expert, left Ericsson last year to be Huawei's corporate controller. Mr. Johnson said he had qualms about taking the job, questioning whether "they might be hiring me as a Western guy just for show and without real responsibility." But, he said, those concerns turned out to be unfounded as he was granted access to Huawei's financial statements and details of its operations. Mr. Johnson has since changed jobs within the company, leading a division that negotiates sales contracts with customers.Still, all of Huawei's 13 board directors are Chinese, raising questions about how much impact a handful of foreign executives will have.

Huawei has also hired a number of other high-profile Western executives to diversify its management team, including Colin Giles, a former Nokia Corp. executive from Australia, and John Suffolk, formerly the U.K. government's chief information officer.

Other Chinese technology companies are taking similar steps. Lenovo Group Ltd. 0992.HK +1.77% , which bought International Business Machines Corp.'s personal-computer business in 2005, has hired more executives and managers from Western competitors in recent years.

Lenovo overtook Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ +0.24% as the world's biggest PC maker this year.

Western executives are becoming increasingly receptive to Chinese companies, said Bhavya Sehgal, head of Asian-Pacific research for Frontier Strategy Group, as these companies expand and snap up assets around the world.

Huawei also has more opportunities to recruit executives, in part because some Western rivals have been struggling and cutting jobs, said Canalys analyst Matthew Ball.

In October, Alcatel-Lucent ALU.FR +0.77% of France said it would reduce its workforce by roughly 15%. In July, Huawei said its revenue for the first half of the year rose 11% from a year earlier to 113.8 billion yuan ($18.7 billion).

Mr. Johnson said he is adjusting to an "indirect" manner of communication at a Chinese company. In one of his first projects for Huawei, Mr. Johnson forged ahead with a new method of compiling financial reports, not understanding that colleagues' questions were really an objection.

"At Western companies, I would expect my subordinates to challenge me, in a direct but respectful way," Mr. Johnson said. "At Huawei, and I suspect in most Chinese companies, that's the same as cursing."

The project was later scrapped.

"Chinese companies are giving control, but the question is whether they give all the independence required for Western executives to be successful," said Mr. Sehgal.

Making the cover of Time magazine used to be one of the great hallmarks of success for an individual or a company, and it’s still no mean feat. Though, most companies would not be thrilled at being described, like Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is this week in its Time cover story, as “one of the most successful, ubiquitous and increasingly strange companies on the planet.”

Then again, Google corporate types may not mind the description, and co-founder and CEO Larry Page may be quite pleased.

It’s not just the wearable computer called Google Glass that Time finds strange, or the “smart balloons” that beam Internet signals to remote locations, or the driverless cars steering themselves down the highways of California, Florida, and Nevada.

Now, Time declares, Google is trying to solve death itself.

Well, yes, apparently it is. But it’s not trying to solve death by, say, the end of the current fiscal quarter, or even in the next few quarters.

In a rare interview with Time, Google's Page suggested that its investment in a company called Calico, announced this week, may not result in any progress for 10 or 20 years. He calls this and Google projects like it, the "moon shots" -- that is, big ideas that can change the world, but not tomorrow.

And that is what is so very strange about Google. Public companies just don’t think 10 or 20 years in the future these days. Or, if they do, they don’t talk about it out loud, because it makes shareholders nervous.

So, before getting into how Google is going to help us all live forever, or at least for much longer, take a look at a couple of projects the company is working on that could pay off a lot sooner:
* Google is working to replace the “tracking cookie,” that familiar but odious component of the Web experience, with something less objectionable on privacy grounds, without breaking the economic system that supports the Internet.
* It has enhanced its search results by adding “in-depth articles” to its results, in order to flesh out timely matches with greater context.
Killing Cookies

Google is considering ways to replace the third-party or tracking cookie as the basic piece of information that marketers use to target individuals based on their Web-browsing activity.

Google’s attempt to lead on this issue, first reported by USAToday.com, will be controversial in itself.

It isn’t going to be easy to replace a system that underpins the now-$120 billion digital advertising business, but it could be argued that it has got to be done, and soon.

For one thing, marketers are getting better at interpreting and responding to the information they have gathered on users’ interests and habits. But the more effective they get, the creepier they are. Advertisers do not aim to creep out their most-likely potential customers, so the industry itself is at least considering alternatives to the cookie.

Other industry players have responded to consumers’ concerns. The latest version of Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Internet Explorer browser has a default setting of “Do Not Track,” and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) does not permit third-party cookies in its Safari browser.

Worst of all, mobile apps do not support third-party cookies. So, their days are numbered.

Among the alternatives Google reportedly is considering is an anonymous identifier, or AdID, a system already in use by Apple.

According to USAToday.com, Google will start “reaching out” to industry, consumer, and government groups to get their reaction in the coming weeks and months.

Early indications are that the advertising industry will be wary of a change that could make Google the keeper of knowledge that is now in their own hands. In the words of AdAge, this system could take Google “from being the biggest card player at the table to owning the casino.”

Exploring “In-Depth”

Google is, after all, supposed to be a search engine company, so it’s a relief to learn that it's still working on that.

It’s also good to get an explanation for those “in-depth articles” links that have begun popping up in some search results.

It seems that Google conducted a study late last year that concluded that about 10% of the queries conducted on its search engine were not satisfactory. That is, the user required more information, different information, or at least more context, than its algorithm had turned up.

The result is “in-depth articles,” a selection of related long-form articles that might be months or even years old, but that includes the context that is otherwise missing.

In an article co-authored by data scientist Peter J. Meyers, Forbes.com’s Denis Pinsky explains the new section, well, in-depth.

Curing Death

But about that cure for death…

The new company, called Calico and funded in part by Google, is dedicated to tackling the issues of aging-related disease, with the goal of extending the human life span.

In a blog post announcing the company, Page says he believes the company can improve millions of lives by bringing what he calls “moon shot thinking” to health care and biotechnology.

The company will be led by Arthur D. Levinson, a biochemist by training who is the chairman and former CEO of Genentech as well as the chairman of Apple. He also was on Google’s board until 2009, when he resigned to resolve a regulatory probe into the overlapping directors at Google and Apple.

Even Wired.com thinks Calico is, for Google, “an odd move.” What happened, it asks, to the promise Page made just two years ago to put more focus in core ventures?

The Time cover story might have an interesting answer to that question. Medicine is becoming an information science, it notes, as vast amounts of data are increasingly used to customize treatment. And Google, the article notes, “is very, very good with large data sets.”

But if that’s not persuasive, consider this: Google has about $54 billion in cash. If it can use a chunk of that to extend all of our lives, or just to cure Larry Page’s midlife crisis (he’s 40), what could it hurt?

Telstra’s China chief executive Xiaowei Chen has left the company for “personal reasons” and not been replaced.

The move is potentially a blow to Telstra’s plans to expand into Asia to offset falling domestic fixed-line profits.

Chen Xiaowei’s departure was first revealed by industry publication Communications Day. A Telstra spokesman said she had left the company several months ago and not been replaced.

The McKinsey & Co consultant and former TV presenter for China Central Television was responsible for Telstra’s assets in China and tasked with growing the telco’s business in China both organically and through acquisitions.

The executive was appointed in May 2011 with Telstra’s then group managing director of Telstra International Tarek Robbiati describing her hiring as “a significant milestone in our drive to recruit the very best people throughout our operations.”

The company runs several popular websites in China including Autohome.com.cn, which is a leading site for car-owners looking for products and services.

Chinese national Tim Chen quit the board of Telstra in October 2012, ostensibly to pursue opportunities away from the telco. But he re-joined the company as its head of international operations exactly one month later at the behest of chief executive David Thodey.

Telstra has a presence in several Asian countries through its submarine cable assets and is actively using them to expand its footprint in the region. Earlier this month it appointed Singapore-Chinese executive Chin Hu Lim to the board as a director to drive growth.

But it also faces significant competition from home-grown rivals in the region who offer similar products and services.

Hong Kong is facing an expansion of low-skilled employment at a time when the number of high-skilled jobs is contracting, reflecting a torpid environment for the territory’s financial services industry and other white-collar sectors.

In the second quarter, the number of high-skilled jobs slipped by 0.9% from a year earlier, following a 2.4% drop in the first quarter. By contrast, non-professional jobs surged 3.8% in the second quarter after rising 4.7% in the first.

Overall, total employment rose 2.5% year-on-year to 3.75 million positions in the second quarter. Of these, 1.38 million are high-skilled jobs while 2.37 million are in the low-skilled segment.

The reason for a contraction in the number of high-skilled positions, according to human resources professionals, is weak hiring in the financial sector. The financial-services industry contributes about 20% of employment and just under a fifth to national output but it’s share has been falling. That’s in contrast to rapid growth of the retail sector and other blue-collar industries that have driven GDP growth lately as more mainland Chinese shop here.

Hong Kong’s GDP grew 3.3% in the second quarter, a healthy clip. The jobless rate also remains a relatively low 3.3%. But economists are concerned the increasing reliance on low-skilled sectors could hurt productivity growth and drag on the economy in the future.

“I believe the contraction of Hong Kong professional sector is more related to financial deleveraging over the global economy,” said Hang Seng Bank economist Ryan Lam. “Financial centers like Hong Kong are more vulnerable to the end of the credit-driven era than Singapore, which has a diversified manufacturing base.”

Hong Kong’s recruitment agencies said they’d witnessed a decline in middle-management jobs, especially in financial services.

“The global financial headwind has made companies more cautious in creating permanent headcount or making replacement hiring, especially mid to senior positions,” said Lancy Chui, regional managing director for Greater China at ManpowerGroup.

She noted some financial institutions continue to downsize and restructure operations following the financial turmoil in 2008.

“I don’t see any new posts for professional jobs in financial services this year,” said another senior consultant for a recruitment agency in the city. “It’s only job replacements filled by a junior post, with lower pay.”

Some recruiters point to cost-cutting in the financial-services industry globally as a factor contributing to Hong Kong’s changing employment landscape.

“Managing costs is still the top priority for most organizations in financial services, and this is the main factor behind the current cautious hiring environment,” said George McFerran, Asia Pacific managing director of eFinancialCareers, a recruitment firm.

GDP has gotten a boost in recent quarters from the rising tide of spending by cashed-up Chinese mainlanders visiting the territory to hunt for everything from daily necessities to luxury goods. Between 2007 and 2011, the contribution of tourism, including the retail trade, to the city’s GDP rose to 4.5% from 3.4%.

Alexa Chow, managing director of Centaline Human Resources Consultant Ltd., said she expected demand for non-professional jobs in the retail and services sectors to remain strong for years to come as tourism from mainland China continues to boom.

Still, some economists worry that the trend toward lower-skilled employment may push down economic growth in future quarters.

“A structural shift of employment toward this low-profitability, labor-reliant sector could cause a gradual slowdown in GDP growth,” said Hang Seng Bank’s Mr. Lam. “If this trend continues, Hong Kong could turn into another tourism city filled with low-skilled labor instead of being an international financial center.”

Apple is reported to be hiring over 200 people in China and the hiring will be across environmental affairs, security and in its retail segment.

On its LinkedIn page for China the iDevice giant is ramping up its employee base, writes Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog. In past few years the iPhone and iPad maker has been hit hard. Environmental activists have filed complaints frequently claiming its China-based manufacturing facility harms the environment. Foxconn is the largest manufacturing partner of Apple in the country and has suffered such complaints too.

Apple has lately come forward in improving the environmental-friendliness at its manufacturing partners including Foxconn and has regularly updated them of the efforts taken in those areas.

Digits blog writes further the environmental affairs program manager of Apple would be working out in Beijing to “ensure that Apple’s products and processes meet and surpass regional and national environmental regulatory requirements.”

The iDevice giant wants to recruit reliable and perfect employees in those positions to the earliest. About the other disciplines there are no words from either Apple or its manufacturing partners as of now.

Chinese high-tech enterprises have been encouraged to find more vacancies for graduates due to the country's mounting employment pressure.

High-tech companies are working hard to recruit more than 950,000 of the record-high 6.99 million graduates this year, according to science and technology minister Wan Gang.

More than 3.62 million university graduates have been employed by the country's 49,000 high-tech companies since a regulation dedicated to develop such firms was introduced in 2008, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

"High-tech enterprises should actively bear social responsibility and take the lead in terms of providing graduates with more suitable positions," said Wan.

The number of Chinese graduates will rise 3 percent year on year during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), said Xin Changxing, vice minister of human resources and social security.

China's high-tech enterprises are largely located in the country's first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Summary: Chinese networking giant increases paychecks of lower-level employees by 30 percent, putting it in an even better position--against local rival ZTE--to recruit new talents.

Huawei has increased the pay package of its Level 13 to 14 employees, main entry- low-level staff, by an average 30 percent, with some getting more than a 70 percent salary hike next month.

According to a NetEase report Friday, which cited Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily, the salary increase would depend on the employees' work experience and individual performance, and will be effective in the company's August payroll.

Starting salaries for newly grads also have been increased significantly. Previously, pre-tax salaries for fresh grads postgraduate students in Huawei were 6,000 yuan (US$979) and 8,000 yuan (US$1,305) per month, respectively. From August, starting salaries, before tax, have been lifted to 8,000 to 9,000 yuan (US$1,305 to US$1,468) per month for newly undergraduate students, and 10,000 yuan (US$1,631) for postgraduate degrees.

Huawei will spend over 1 billion yuan (US$162 million) to support the salary increases, the report added.

A Wall Street Journal report said in 2012 entry-level salaries of 69 percent of Chinese college graduates were lower than 2,200 yuan ($359) a month, while graduates from lower-level universities earned an average of only 1,903 yuan (US$310) a month. Huawei's basic salaries for fresh graduates are substantially higher than the market average.

In the past, employees in Huawei earned about 10 to 15 percent higher salary than their peers holding similar positions in rival ZTE. After the latest round of salary increase, Huawei will have a upper hand recruiting new talents in the future.

The company is also known for its generosity to employees. In 2010, when Huawei's sales revenue reached 182.5 billion yuan (US$29.57 billion) with a record-high net profit of 30.6 billion yuan (US$4.96 billion), the Chinese networking equipment manufacturer implemented a 11.4 percent salary increase for its staff. Stock dividends also hit a historical record of 2.98 yuan (US$0.48) per share at that time.

Almost overnight, China has become the world's second largest online retail (e-tail) market; revenue estimates for 2012 run as high as $210 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 120 percent since 2003.

At the same time, the compound annual growth in Brazil was 34 percent, and in the United States, 17 percent. These statistics are among the key findings of "China's e-tail Revolution: Online Shopping as a Catalyst for Growth", a new report by the McKinsey Global Institute.

China's retail sector already is among the most wired anywhere. Online sales accounted for about 5 to 6 percent of the country's total retail sales in 2012, compared with 5 percent in the United States. In fact, by the year 2020, it "could potentially lift China's private consumption by an additional 4 to 7 percent. Here's why: at 129 million (in 2011), China has the world's largest online population, surpassing the US's 81 million by a remarkable 59.3 percent.

In point of fact, most (about 90 percent) of Chinese e-tailing happens on digital marketplaces, megasites similar to eBay or Amazon. "These megasites include PaiPai, Taobao, and Tmall, which in turn are owned by bigger e-commerce groups. "Moreover Chinese e-tailing is not just replacing traditional retail transactions, but it is also stimulating consumption that would not otherwise take place. That stimulus is "the lift" referred to in the previous paragraph.

Although still in the early stages of growth, China's e-tail ecosystem is already quite profitable, realizing margins of around 8 to 10 percent of earnings, before interest, taxes, and amortization---slightly higher than those of average physical retailers.

Contrasting what's happening in China is the online retail in the US, Europe, and Japan. There, the dominant model involves a more even combination of brick-and-mortar retailers (such as Best Buy, Carrefour, Darty, Dixons, and Wal-mart) and online merchants (such as Amazon and eBay), which run their own sites and handle the details of commerce.

With this kind of explosive growth, China's e-tail business is poised for continued exponential growth. The biggest challenge the megasites will face will be staffing. China is already having serious shortages of skilled personnel. US companies with the right products have an extraordinary marketing opportunity.

Microsoft is expected to establish an innovation center in south China's Hainan Province, the first of its kind on the Chinese mainland, according to an agreement signed between Microsoft and the Hainan provincial government on Sunday.

Based on Microsoft's leading technology platform, the Microsoft Innovation Center will attract software enterprises in the fields of tourism and agriculture to Hainan, said Li Guoliang, deputy governor of Hainan.

Li said the government hopes to nurture an ecology-related industrial software chain worth 5 billion yuan (798 million U.S. dollars).

Microsoft will also build a "Microsoft IT Academy" in Hainan to boost the training of IT experts.

Microsoft will carry out strategic cooperation with Hainan regarding technological development, software training and intellectual property rights protection, according to a memorandum of understanding inked by the Hainan provincial government and Microsoft (China) Co., Ltd. on the sidelines of the ongoing Boao Forum for Asia.

Microsoft Group Vice President Orlando Ayala said global tourism hot spots are moving to the Asia-Pacific region, adding that the company's cooperation with Hainan will prop up the province's efforts to become a major international tourist destination.

Microsoft Innovation Centers are state-of-the-art facilities designed to foster collaboration on innovative research, technology and software solutions, involving a combination of government, academic and industry participants.

China's has 48 million people working in the fields of science and technology, but the pool of personnel still lacks high-level scientists for strategic needs, a former human resources official has revealed.

Though the numbers of both sci-tech current workers and graduates outnumber those of the United States, China is not a great power of talents, Xu Songtao, former deputy head of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said at a seminar on Monday.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Science and Technology, China has just over 10,000 people classed as high-level innovative talents, said Xu, also an adviser to the China Talent Research body.

Despite China being a marine leader, the number of Chinese scientists registered in a database of oceanic talents is less than 100, one-twentieth of that of the United States, he added.

"The innovative capabilities and competitiveness of Chinese talents are also weak," Xu said, urging officials at all levels to pay great attention to the nurturing of talented people and to initiate a number of recruitment projects.

He also suggested creating a competitive environment to eliminate the incapable as well as to form a reserve of strategic talents.

China’s second largest smartphone seller Lenovo will reportedly foray into the chip design segment. The company is expected to design own chips for smartphones and tablets.
“Lenovo is looking to expand its IC design team from 10 to 100 by the mid of this year,” EE Times quoted an industry source with direct knowledge of Lenovo’s recruitment of chip designers. The PC maker will be hiring 40 engineers in Shenzhen and 60 in Beijing.

This initiative appears to be driven by the company’s desire to control its own destiny in smartphones and tablets--a la HiSilicon at Huawei. (HiSilicon is a chip division of Huawei.)

Unlike Samsung or Apple, Lenovo has a checkered history of adopting different apps processors from a variety of suppliers for its smartphones. The company adopted MediaTek’s MT6573 in the Lenovo A60 smartphone in 2011, while it became the first company--outside Samsung --in 2012 to design in Samsung Electronics’ quad-core apps processor Exynos 4 in its LePhone K860.

Lenovo, however, announced earlier this year a 5.5-inch smartphone, dubbed K900, by integrating Intel’s first dual-core Atom chip for phones. The Atom Z2580 is said to have roughly doubled the CPU performance of Intel’s single-core Medfield processor used in Lenovo’s K800 phone, which was introduced a year ago.

While Lenovo might have been enjoying its freedom in choosing the best apps processor available on the market, reality bit hard, sources said, when Samsung Electronics refused to supply its newest version of the Exynos apps processor to the Chinese company.

Indeed, on the growing Chinese smartphone market last year, Lenovo became Samsung’s biggest rival--with Samsung holding a 17.7 per cent share, with Lenovo at 13.2 per cent and Apple at 11 per cent.

Meanwhile, Lenovo has been beefing up its senior management team to prepare itself to become a leading consumer electronics vendor.

The world's second-largest supplier of personal computers last month (February) named Jerry Yang, the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo, as a "board observer.” Further, Lenovo added Tudor Brown, one of the founders of ARM, as a non-executive director to Lenovo's roster of seasoned veterans.

It’s far from clear if an internal group of mere 100 IC engineers can make a dent in the already crowded apps processor market. And yet, as Shao Yang, CMO of Huawei Device, recently said in an interview with EE Times, having a chip division of its own could help [the handset company] “negotiate better with other semiconductor companies.”

ZTE has reduced some middle and senior management positions amid an ongoing organizational review which begun last year to streamline the organization.

A spokesperson told ZDNet there will also be changes in underperforming parts of the company. "ZTE's aim is to make our organization more streamlined and deliver improved business performance," the spokesperson said, adding the company has a "natural" employee attrition rate of between 5 percent to 10 percent annually.

The company was responding to queries about reports about massive job cuts to its workforce in the first quarter of 2013.

The Investment Bulletin reported on Monday it learned the Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer will be laying off 20 percent of its workforce in the first quarter of the year. The layoffs will also be staggered, with a certain percentage of contracts not being extended as they come up for renewal each month, the article said.

Streamlining underway
In January, ZTE announced plans to streamline itself to form a simplified, three layer structure comprising of headquarters, operational division and representative office, and some regional and structural grouping will be eliminated.

"The reorganization will strengthen competitiveness and risk-management, ensuring all departments have access to key operational resources," ZTE said in the statement.

Rumors of large layoffs at ZTE have been circulating since ZTE's vice president Shen Li announced his resignation on February 17, 2013. However, the company's management has denied such claims that it laid off 10 percent of its workforce, explaining 5 percent left of their own will while 5 percent were those with the lowest performance and part of routine elimination, a separate report by Want China Times, noted.

In January, ZTE said it expected to book losses of up to US$439 million in its preliminary report for the year ending December 31, 2012, due to postponed contracts and decreases in revenue from terminals in the domestic market.

Gary Wang, who left his online video platform after its merger with rivals Youku in August, said he hopes to import foreign technical experts to staff his new enterprise, to be launched April 1.

HONG KONG – Having left the limelight more than six months ago when he sold his online-video brainchild, Tudou, to his erstwhile rivals Youku, Gary Wang is now gearing for a return with a bang – by unveiling a Beijing-based animated-film studio producing movies for domestic consumption.

But the enterprise may have an international twist on it: Wang is aiming to recruit animation-film experts from Hollywood so as to compete with imported U.S. blockbusters.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Wang said he would build a team that includes U.S. members. He said he had met directors, storyboard artists and senior animators while on a two-week scouting trip in Los Angeles and San Francisco in January.

“I get the impression that everyone there is excited about the Chinese market,” said Wang, who was born in China but moved to New York in 1993 to study high school before graduating with a computer science degree at Baltimore’s John Hopkins University.

Wang said he has already secured hundreds of thousands of dollars from international investors for his latest project and that the output will be mainly aimed at domestic audiences.

Citing an improvement in his home country’s distribution, exhibition and copyright protection issues, and also the surge in opportunities and profit in what now stands as the second-biggest film market in the world, Wang said “the time is right” to launch an animation-film studio that could tap into this pool.

Wang’s studio will add a domestic competitor in a scene that has long been dominated by Hollywood blockbusters. While films like DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda franchise have proved to be massive hits in China, the local industry has failed to offer reputable alternatives beyond straightforward copies like Legend of a Rabbit, which flopped badly at home.

In fact, DreamWorks will be one of Wang’s major competitors on home turf as well, as the U.S. studio is now already proceeding with building a studio near Shanghai under the name Oriental DreamWorks, a joint venture owned alongside China Media Capital, Shanghai Media Group and Shanghai Alliance Investment. Upon the launch of the company last year, the company announced the making of Kung Fu Panda 3 as a co-production, with a release date in 2016.

Wang founded Tudou in 2005 and sold his company to Youku, his long-running rivals in the business of hosting online videos for Chinese audiences, in August in a stock deal worth about $1 billion. He said his investors, which he did not name, are with him in terms of looking at the new business from a “very long-term view."

Foxconn says a recruitment freeze is not due to slowing production of the iPhone5.

Foxconn, the huge company that makes high-tech products including the iPhone, said Wednesday that a recruitment freeze at its vast facilities in China was not due to slowing production of the iPhone5.

"Due to an unprecedented rate of return of employees following the Chinese New Year holiday compared to years past, our company has decided to temporarily slow down our recruitment process," said a Foxconn statement Wednesday.

"This action is not related to any single customer and any speculation to the contrary is false and inaccurate," the firm said.

Some dispute that explanation. A story Wednesday by the Financial Times based in London said the hiring freeze comes amid poor iPhone5 sales.

The Chinese website yicai.com, a financial news site based in Shanghai, reported that Foxconn facilities in central China's Zhengzhou and southern China's Shenzhen have stopped recruiting new workers, but will employ more robots in the future.

Boosted by global demand for Apple's electronic, the Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn has grown into mainland China's largest private-sector employer, with 1.5 million workers. So news of hiccups in its operations can spark market concerns worldwide.

Apple shares were down slightly to $452.60 Wednesday morning.

Many employees are not at work this week due to Chinese Lunar New Year. The annual New Year festival, falling this year Feb. 9 to 24, is a time when almost all Chinese factory workers head back for once-a-year visits to often distant hometowns.

The Shenzhen Evening News said that Foxconn had decided to stop recruiting three months ago. The recruitment center website for Foxconn in central China's Henan province carries a banner headline advising that the firm will not hire for the next half year.

Chinese young people are seriously considering making a living online as the economic slowdown bites China's more conventional jobs market.

An Internet business boom has helped create more than 10 million jobs in China, which greatly alleviates current employment pressure, according to a new report by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS).

The report, the first of its kind by the ministry, showed that young people made up the majority of those involved in Internet entrepreneurship, including online shop owners and employees, as well as practitioners in areas closely related to e-commerce.

"The Internet goes beyond physical restrictions, so our power can be magnified to an enormous scale," Li Xueling, founder and CEO of Chinese social platform company YY Inc. was quoted as saying by Tuesday's edition of the People's Daily.

Li, whose company made its NASDAQ debut in November 2012, said the Internet quickens the process of trial and error in entrepreneurship, citing the example of a college graduate who was made a millionaire by teaching others how to make PowerPoint files online.

Internet business also allows more freedom and diversity in employment choices, according to the MHRSS report.

In 2012, a record 6.8 million people graduated from universities in China. Yet a large number of graduates were unable to land a job due to a discrepancy between the workforce and the actual needs of the economy.

Some of the jobless new grads may have flowed to the more flexible online commerce.

The MHRSS report showed that almost half of Internet practitioners surveyed own an associate degree or bachelor's degree, and another 33.4 percent received education from middle schools or technical schools. People with strong backgrounds in marketing, management, technology and law are most needed, it said.

Many young entrepreneurs said online business helps lower costs and increase efficiency, and also offers opportunities to make friends and find fun.

Moreover, the flourishing of Internet economics makes consumers more confident and comfortable with buying online, especially amid a current crisis of confidence in the country's commercial activities, the report said.

Taobao.com, a leading Chinese online shopping platform, sees an average of 18 million transactions each day, representing millions of deals closed on mutual trust and the guarantee of contracts, according to the People's Daily.

To further boost employment through online business, more measures, including credit support and tax exemptions should be rolled out to help small start-ups stay sound financially, the MHRSS suggested in the report.

Authorities should also guide private funds to invest in Internet businesses with potential for growth, the ministry added.

"The Internet makes improbable things possible. That is the most inspiring thing of our time," Li said.

Comrise, a global consulting firm with headquarters in the U.S and China, is pleased to announce the expansion of its Data Science Campus Recruiting Program into China.

After the overwhelming success that Comrise, a global consulting firm with headquarters in the U.S and China, had during its nationwide Campus Recruiting Program, it is pleased to announce its expansion of the program into China.

"Our main focus right now is providing Data Scientists, Data Engineers, and strong Analytics Professionals to organizations in both the U.S. and China," says Rob Bigini , VP of Operations at Comrise. "Our Campus Recruiting Program – combined with strong ties to Universities across the globe, and 30 years of experience in Staff Supplementation, Permanent Placement and Project Based Solutions – allows us to do just that."

Over the past few months Comrise traveled to nearly a dozen prominent U.S. universities to recruit analytical talent for its "Big Data" training courses in ECL (Enterprise Control Language) – a query and control language, and HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) Systems – a data-intensive supercomputing platform, as well as for its clients and in-house Data Science Graduate Programme.

With nine offices between China and Hong Kong, Comrise is perfectly positioned to expand these offerings to graduate students overseas. Among the universities already visited by Comrise are Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, as well as Sichuan University and Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu.

Comrise's Chengdu office is in the process of expanding and moving into a new, 1,200 square meter office space, so it will serve as headquarters for the Data Science Graduate Programme in China. Students accepted into this program will participate in a "Big Data" training course before working on Big Data Proof of Concepts for client companies.

Organizations interested in hiring "Big Data" talent (i.e., Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Data Analysts, etc.), please e-mail marketing@comrise.com.

About Comrise:
Established in 1984, Comrise is a global consulting firm with headquarters in the U.S. and China. Our teams specialize in Managed IT, Big Data, and Workforce Solutions – Staff Augmentation, Recruiting, RPO, and Payrolling.

Hewlett-Packard has issued new guidelines to its Chinese suppliers aimed at reducing the long hours worked by temporary student workers and ensuring that their recruitment process complies with local regulations.

The exploitation of students has been rife across the electronics supplier industry in China, as companies resort to hiring large numbers of temporary workers when orders for electronic gadgets spike, because of a product launch or seasonal demand.

HP’s supplier guidelines, issued on Friday, stipulated that all work must be voluntary, and local regulations regarding minimum working age and work environments must be adhered to. In addition, HP said it would ask suppliers to ensure that students would be asked to work only if working at the supplier “complemented the primary area of study” of the student.

Investigations into temporary work by labour activists in China have revealed a pattern of municipal governments requiring students to work at factories in the local area, as well as students frequently working long hours at companies that had little relevance to their studies.

HP said it had developed the guidelines in tandem with China’s Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility. The group’s executive director, Sanna Johnson, said the guidelines were a “clear recognition” of the company’s commitment to its workforce.

Geoff Crothall, communications director at China Labour Bulletin, a lobby group in Hong Kong, was sceptical that the guidelines and proposed audits by the company, which has more than 1,000 production suppliers spanning 45 countries and territories, would be effective.

“How are they going to follow through,” said Mr Crothall. “It’s not up to them how a supplier factory recruits, it is up to the factory.” Mr Crothall said that it was the demands by the electronics industry for flexibility and lean inventories that “created the problem [of a temporary student workforce] in the first place”.

Mr Crothall said that revision to China’s laws with regard to labour contracts made late last year, which were intended to crackdown on the widespread use of temporary contract labour, meant that all companies would have to be more vigilant on this issue. As many as 60m workers in China were employed by labour agencies across the country, he said. Numbers of temporary workers surged after China put in place new labour laws in 2008.

Mr Crothall said that the only way to ensure compliance was not by sending in auditors and periodically collecting information, but by allowing independent unions in factories and ensuring there was collective bargaining. “You can’t send in auditors a few times a year. Workers get bonuses for giving the right answers and penalised for giving the wrong ones,” he said.

Foxconn, which is under pressure from Apple to improve its workplace conditions, said on Monday that it would allow genuinely representative union elections for its 1.2m workers in China from next year.

50 universities, colleges provide strong, reliable workforce for southwestern city

Ask Liu Jia which city he would choose if he had to re-launch his business, and his answer is unequivocal: "Chengdu, definitely Chengdu."

Liu is chief operating officer of Goodteam Studio, an APP development firm based in Chengdu, and he insists the southwest inland city is quite simply unequalled as a source of the kind of top talent he needs to remain competitive, not just in China, but globally.

Goodteam became top 10 on the Google Play store in terms of revenue in 2012, with more than 40 million downloads worldwide.

The young COO adds that even if one day he plans to open offices in other cities, its R&D team will still be based in Chengdu, because it harbors a pool of IT talent unavailable elsewhere.

As China's economy remains robust, cities across the country are thirsty for talent. Yet at the same time, they are being scorched by rising labor costs.

However, Chengdu's talent pool remains healthy, fed by more than 50 universities and colleges that provide around 150,000 graduates every year.

"Businesses here enjoy relatively low labor costs as well as low turnover rates," said Liu Jianing, head of the investment sales division of Chengdu Investment Promotion Commission.

He reckons that compared with coastal cities, labor costs and turnover rates in Chengdu are a quarter to a third lower.

"We have a comprehensive talent pool, from management to skilled workers," added Liu.

Chengdu's reputation for providing the very best talent has also grown outside of China.

ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy headquartered in Chicago, is a good example.

It has set up its software technology company in the city staffed by 50 recruits, 35 of whom are local IT graduates.

ThoughtWorks is well-known in the industry for intensive recruitment processes, with numerous rounds of interviews often spread over weeks.

"When we choose a city to start our business, the only thing we care about is whether there is enough talent," said Xiong Jie, ThoughtWorks' office director in Chengdu, who stresses that a lack of talent can be a real problem in the IT industry.

Xiong added that countries including Australia, the US and many in Europe are facing a lack of talented IT staff, but China is rich with potential stars in many cities including Chengdu.

According to the 2012 Chengdu Investment Guide, produced by Chengdu Information Office, there were 58,243 IT graduates in the city, meaning one in five graduates in the city is either a programmer or a software engineer.

"Companies like us are always in hot pursuit of programmers. That's why we come here," said Xiong, a 32-year-old from Chongqing, a municipality just an hour's train ride from Chengdu.

The city's 2012 investment guide claims that 233 of the Fortune 500 companies have a presence in Chengdu, including global giants such as Intel and IBM, which have set up research labs in cooperation with universities in Chengdu.

Companies have also built 180 training bases to better prepare their potential employees when they are still on campus, says the guide.

Besides holding onto its own local talent, the Chengdu government also goes to other big cities like Beijing and Shanghai to attract talented recruits for its IT industry, added Liu Jianing, head of Chengdu Investment Promotion Commission's investment sales division.

"Sichuan province used to be known as a great source of labor, but now we are seeing the opposite trend in some of our industries," said Liu.

"Low living costs, comfortable lifestyle and weather, low stress and large job opportunities are Chengdu's great advantages in attracting talents to come here to work."

The latest list of the 10 happiest Chinese cities, based on a survey conducted by Oriental Outlook magazine and the China Association of Mayors, released in December, had Chengdu and Hangzhou at the top of the list.

According to a human resource report released in 2011 by 51job, a Chinese online jobseeker website, the turnover rate of software engineers with three-year experience in Chengdu is 8 percent, in stark contrast with Beijing's 21 percent and Shenzhen's 20 percent.

While MyCOS's Fresh Graduates Employment Annual Report 2010 showed that Chengdu's retention rate of fresh graduates was 61 percent, against 28 percent for another major information technology and education hub, Wuhan.

"Low turnover rates are good for company development in the long run. Our workforce and the huge reserves of talent we have get high praise from employers," added Liu Jianing.

Qing Chuan is the manager of a drugs company, which produces sterile injection devices to American market, and he says Chengdu's dependable workforce is crucial for the business.

"Because of high living costs in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, staff can move on quickly. The workforces there are not as stable as cities like Chengdu," he said.

Qing added that the talent pool is especially strong for engineers, a sector particularly targeted by universities in Chengdu.

Game APPs developer Liu Jia says he is proud of his Chengdu team, all of which are local to the city. As the city's APP developers continue to attract worldwide attention, Liu adds that he is getting regular enquiries from companies around the globe looking to send their staff to be trained by his company.

"Having a solid workforce means we can whole-heartedly devote ourselves to developing games.

"But in markets like Shanghai and Beijing, there are too many distractions and temptations."

Li Yu in Chengdu contributed to this story

Summary: The majority of IT job demands in China are focused on basic skills such as programming, but cloud and mobility will continue to drive IT employment for 2013.

Basic IT skills such as programming are highly sought after in China, but professionals with high-end skills are preferred in specific IT segments.

A spokesperson from Chinese job search site CJOL.com said that basic IT skills such as programming lead the demand in China. Citing statistics from its job board, she said companies looking for employees with basic IT skills account for some 70 percent of total advertisements.

Raymond Wong, general manager for IT and telecommunications (IT&T) at Hudson China, had a different view. He said cloud computing and mobile skills will continue to drive demand in the IT jobs market, while sectors such as big data and social network also have shown strong growth.

The CJOL spokesperson noted that cloud adoption has matured in China, so demand for IT professionals in this area will focus on high-end skills rather than the mid- to low-end talent pool.

"Currently, many large enterprises in China are researching cloud technologies or cloud-based services. Cloud computing has successfully moved beyond the internal IT system to become a public service, and has become a hot technology instead of an emerging technology.

"Experienced IT professionals are now beginning to move to cloud technology development," said the spokesperson. "We predict that demand for cloud computing professionals will grow in 2013."

She noted that business intelligence and big data are still new industries in China and will mature, though not reaching mainstream yet, in 2013.

IT job market slows in 2013

According to Wong, hiring expectations across all industries in China have dipped. "According to statistics in the Hudson Report, hiring expectation has fallen from 85 percent of employers willing to increase their headcounts in the first quarter of 2012 to 59.3 percent in this year's first quarter," he said.

Demand for IT&T professional is impacted as companies look to save budgets by cutting IT procurement. As a result, tech vendors will attempt to control cost due to unsatisfactory revenues, Wong said.

CJOL, however, is more optimistic for hiring activities in China this year. "Even though job demands after the Internet explosion have slowed, industries such as telecommunications, e-commerce, and enterprise applications have seen small increase in hiring," she said.

She noted the IT hardware segment will likely see another stage of development, which will lead to increases in average salary and demand for IT professionals in this market.

"In 2013, the IT industry will continue to see extreme polarization in IT talent," she added. "High-end IT professionals will [strive to] become more high end as demand [surpasses] supply, and their salary requirements increase. [The supply of] those with low-end skills will increase and [these professionals] will find it more difficult to find satisfactory jobs."

Mixed preference for local companies

In a previous ZDNet Asia report, a recruiter said Chinese top-level executives working for multinational companies (MNCs) are not given sufficient management power. This had led to some executives preferring to leave their MNC jobs to lead local startups where their skills would be appreciated.

CJOL's spokesperson said the high-level executives that the recruitment company spoke to expressed a preference to work in local companies. "The main reason for their limited management power in MNCs is the difference in cultural background and worldview between the Chinese employees and the foreign companies," she explained, but noted that this scenario is not commonplace.

High-level executives prefer staying in local startups because they put more importance on salary and career development, she added.

"A lot of local companies offer competitive salary and development platform when compared with MNCs, which decreases the attractiveness of [working for a] foreign company," the CJOL spokesperson said.

Hudson's Wong, though, holds a different view. He said the trend of employees preferring local companies is not common, although it surfaced during the IPO boom in China in 2010. He said the top three aspects of an employer that currently attract IT&T professionals in China are: salary, cutting-edge technology, and world-class brand.

The cloud service provider has snapped up industry veteran Alan Perkins for a newly created role.

Hosting and cloud service provider Rackspace has appointed Alan Perkins as its director of technology and product for Asia-Pacific.

In this newly created role, the IT veteran will be spruiking Rackspace's open cloud standards model, designed to avoid vendor lock-in, on the back of growing cloud computing adoption in the region.

"This is an important time for the development of open cloud technology as Australian firms align to truly flexible computing models that will ensure they can perform with maximum agility in both the short and long term," Perkins said in a statement.

He will be based in Sydney, where the company recently set up its first Australian datacentre.

Perkins previously spent more than a decade with software developer Altium, and was the CIO there for seven years. He was a finalist for the IDC Asia-Pacific CIO of the Year award in 2009.

Perkins has over 20 years experience in systems analysis and design.

"At a time when cloud and hosting decisions are becoming increasingly important to business, it gives us tremendous confidence to know that we've got someone of Alan's diverse experience, leadership skills, and deep knowledge of technology on board," Rackspace Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand Mark Randall said in a statement.

In late 2012 Chinese appliance and HVAC OEM Hisense began constructing what it said will be the world's largest research and development base, in Qingdao, China.

The new facility will carry out R&D across the gamut of Hisense industry technology. Its biggest global markets are refrigerators, air-conditioners, and TVs.

The new R&D facility will cover 430 acres and the company said it will have "tens of thousands of R&D employees."

The new facility replaces the company's existing R&D center on a 50-acre site in Qingdao. The company said the old facility, in a former Hisense factory, can't meet the demand of the company's rapid growth.

The company intends to attract global talent to staff the new facility, including through overseas recruitment, global cooperation, and acquisitions. In the last year, the company has acquired Canada's Flextronics, U.S.-based Archcom Chip, Huaya, Taiwan Laser, and others. It said dozens of technology leaders have already joined the company from the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

The new Qingdao base will serve as the hub for the company's global R&D network, which includes facilities in the United States, Canada, Germany, and seven other regions.

Summary: Small and mid-sized e-retailers have started sacking people before the Chinese New Year amid pessimistic forecasts for the year, but despite Internet sales surging another 65 percent in 2012.

After one of the country's most prominent electronics retailers, Gome Electrical Appliance, last week announced that it would lay off 200 staff on its e-commerce platform Gome.com.cn, a number of other B2C (business-to-commerce) retailers in China have also followed suit.

With the Chinese New Year approaching, Qianpin, one of China's top 10 group-buying sites, confirmed in a First Financial Daily report that the company had fired around 200 employees in a new round of layoffs executed at the end of 2012, accounting for almost 40 percent of Qianpin's total headcount.

In 2011, the company announced that it had successfully attracted venture capital totaling 100 million yuan (US$16.1 million), touting "not-short-of-cash" as its recruitment gimmick.

Some of China's local clothing brands also closed their online stores on Taobao Mall (TMall), the country's largest B2C marketplace. Some companies hold negative views on the market outlook for 2013, and have laid off staff before the start of the year's peak recruitment season.

At the same time, larger players, including 360buy.com and Suning.com, launched aggressive promotions in 2012, which pushed up overall costs for these smaller-sized e-retailers in attracting consumers and affected sales. This led to attempts by these retailers to reduce staff costs in a bid to survive in the market, according to the First Financial Daily report.

However, a report released by 100EC.cn on January 29 showed that the size of the Chinese online retail market reached 1.3 trillion yuan (US$209 billion) in 2012, representing a year-on-year increase of 64.7 percent. This indicated that the overall e-retail market maintained a "fast pace of development" in China.

But sales promotion wars between large e-retailers also brought up several issues in the market. Consumers would only make purchases when there are huge discounts, which further squeezed the margins of smaller players in the market, according to analyst Wang Zhouping from the China e-Business Research Center. He anticipated that more small and mid-sized e-retailers will implement staff layoffs or close down in early-2013.

The Judge Group and the Shanghai Information Service Outsourcing Development Center, an affiliate branch of the Shanghai municipal government, have co-launched the U.S.-China IT Services Exchange Program 2013 to help U.S. and Chinese businesses exchange supply and demand information and promote partnership in both markets.

U.S. and Chinese companies seeking to conduct business in both countries and with demonstrated interest in overseas IT and Business Process Outsourcing will have the opportunity to build mutually beneficial relationships.

Judge and the iISO will host events for participating companies to explore potential partnerships. Events will be held in Shanghai in April, June and October and in select U.S. cities in November. Judge will select the participating U.S. companies and facilitate the U.S.-based events. The iISO will reimburse participating companies for their travel expenses and facilitate travel and accommodations in China.

"Judge has been conducting business in China since 2008, and we have been very successful in building a relationship with the Shanghai government," said Martin E. Judge, Jr., CEO and founder of The Judge Group. "We are very proud to have been selected to be their exclusive partner for this program. It's truly a privilege for us to have the opportunity to help other companies establish partnerships abroad."

For more information about participating in the U.S.-China Services Exchange Program, contact Eric Qiu at (+1) 571-230-2911 (U.S.), (+86) 135-0178-2375 (China), or eqiu@judge.com.

About Shanghai and the Yangtze Delta Metropolitan Area:

Shanghai, a megacity of 20 million, is located at the tip of the Yangtze River Delta Metropolitan Area in eastern China. It is one of the most modern and business-friendly Chinese cities to U.S. investors and has been home to over 3,500 U.S.-invested businesses. Yangtze River Delta Metropolitan Area, with a total population of 150 million living in Shanghai and a cluster of tier-2 and tier-3 cities about an hour away, is one of the most prosperous regions in China.

About The Judge Group:

The Judge Group, established in 1970, is a global leader in professional services that provides technology consulting, staffing solutions, corporate training and human capital management. Our solutions are delivered through an annual workforce of 4,500 professionals and a network of locations across the United States, Canada and Asia. If you would like to learn more about The Judge Group, visit www.judge.com or call toll free (800) 650-0035.

The Judge Group was recently ranked the 17th Largest Information Technology Staffing Firm in the U.S. by Staffing Industry Analysts.

The Judge Group logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=14430

A CONSTRUCTION ind- ustry project management specialist has got a firm foothold in the booming Chinese construction market.

Melton-based Sypro has secured a landmark contract to help build a network of substations in Hong Kong.

It has beaten international competition to supply its online project management system to China Light And Power, which is building seven electrical substations to power the massive data network needed by businesses in the region.

Now it has established an important foothold in the region, Sypro is hopeful of winning more orders from China Light And Power and the Chinese Government.

Managing director Simon Hunt said: "The deal with China Light And Power is very significant.

"We now have a foothold in the booming Chinese construction market, which bodes well for the future.

"Businesses in Hong Kong put a lot of trust in recommendation. If project A is using our software, project B is more likely to use it as are projects C, D, E and F.

"It could also help us win orders from other Government Departments."

Sypro, which was established in 2007 and includes Balfour Beatty, Mansell and Sir Robert McAlpine among its clients, is a supplier of project management software for New Engineering Contracts (NEC) – a family of contracts used in the management of construction projects in the UK.

The Sypro system has been used to project manage the A164 upgrade and the new Beverley Community Hospital, both in East Yorkshire, and the £840m Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, which is the largest healthcare building in Europe.

Mr Hunt said the business is currently in the process of having its product evaluated on one of the largest Government projects in the region – an £80m flood prevention scheme that will build an enormous storage tank under Hong Kong's Happy Valley Racecourse.

He said: "This was a competitive process where we have gone up against international businesses and won.

"The impact for the business is very positive. We are going to need to increase our headcount to make the most of this opportunity moving forward."

Mr Hunt said the China Light And Power contract was a "landmark" deal because it is the first time an NEC contract management system has been used in Hong Kong.

China Light And Power is one of the largest power companies in the Asia-Pacific region. The initial contract covers the first substation, which is costing £13m to build.

Sypro's board includes technical director and NEC consultant Dr Stuart Kings and director and investor Gerard Toplass.

The company, which is forecasting turnover of £500,000 for the year to December, is also currently working on a project to develop a generic form of Sypro which can be used on any type of project.

Mr Hunt said: "We are looking to recruit extra staff to help with administration and sales over the next few months."

More foreigners are employed by or showed a stronger interest in working for China-based companies against a backdrop of the rise of the country's economy and the global expansion of many Chinese firms.

Huawei Technologies Co, the world's second largest telecoms equipment maker by revenue, surprised people last year by inviting John Suffolk, former UK government chief information officer, to act as its global cyber security officer.

Suffolk is one of the most influential foreigners to work with a Chinese company. He works at Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen, a coastal city in South China's Guangdong province, and reports directly to Huawei's chief executive officer, Ren Zhengfei.

After Suffolk joined Huawei, Omar Khan, former chief product and technology officer of Samsung Mobile, was appointed co-chief executive officer of Beijing-based NetQin Mobile Inc, a mobile security software provider.

Khan was dubbed "the Godfather of Galaxy" after launching perhaps one of the best series of smartphones the Android mobile system has seen yet - the Samsung Galaxy S line.

The trend of more talented foreigners joining Chinese companies is just beginning, analysts said. Yang Haifeng, a telecoms expert who is also chief editor of Communications World Weekly, said the vigorous Chinese economy, coupled with overseas expansion of many Chinese businesses, would create many opportunities for skilled people worldwide.

"Chinese companies can provide them (expatriates) with promising prospects, good experience and, of course, generous salaries," said Yang.

Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a consultancy company that follows China's IT industry, said some companies in China are beginning to "transcend their Chinese-ness".

"In companies, I think we are almost beyond the 'them and us' of foreigners and Chinese. Once a company is founded by entrepreneurs, it doesn't really matter where the founders are from. We are entering the age of the 'multinational startup'," Clark said in an email sent to China Daily.

This new breed of company is far more attractive to expatriates to work for than the traditional Chinese company, he added.

ZTE Corp, the world's fifth telecoms equipment vendor, earns more than half of its revenue from overseas markets. In some developed countries, such as in the United States, about half of ZTE's management team are expatriates, according to Dai Shu, director of corporate branding and communications at ZTE.

Dai said ZTE provides an equal playing field when it comes to promoting talented people. "Sometimes, foreigners have more advantages than Chinese staff because we measure performance largely by the results they deliver," Dai said, pointing out that foreigners usually produce good results because they are culturally more close to clients.

In addition to talented foreigners, Chinese companies are also very interested in taking people who have experience in foreign companies. Lenovo Group, China's largest PC maker, hired more than 40 laid-off employees from its mobile product rival Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc in October.
Chen Wenhui vice-president of Lenovo and general manager of phone research and development, said once Lenovo heard the news, it went to Nanjing Motorola's R&D center immediately.

Former Motorola talent would improve Lenovo's overseas market research ability because Motorola had many long-serving staff with good overseas experience, Chen said.

When the search giant Google Inc said it was shutting down its search service Google.cn on the Chinese mainland in 2010, its Chinese competitors also seized the opportunity to hire the US company's best staff.

A number of Google's senior executives left the company amid rising speculation that Google may further withdraw from the Chinese mainland with its decision to redirect its mainland traffic to Hong Kong.

These included Zhu Huican, the inventor of Google's image search service, who went to Tencent Holdings Ltd as the chief architect of the company's search service, but later he left again, and Wang Jin, who has been working at Baidu Inc as vice-president of technology after he left Google as former deputy director of its engineering and research institute.

For Tencent Holdings Ltd, the biggest Internet company in China by sales, talent is talent, whether it is Chinese or foreign.

"Bringing in foreign talent is quite normal here," said Chen Shuanghua, assistant general manager of Tencent's human resources department, adding that it is not the nationality but ability that matters.

Quite a few of Tencent's employees used to work at major IT companies, including Microsoft Corp, Google Inc and Oracle Corp, he said.

Tencent hired Steve Gray, former executive producer at Electronic Arts Inc. Gray, who led the project for the Lord of the Rings franchise, used to be invited to give lectures at Tencent. After Gray and Tencent knew each other better, he was offered a job at Tencent in 2009 as an executive in charge of game production. Tencent is the biggest online game operator in China.

It's not just research and development that benefits from foreign talent. So does global business expansion. Chen said Tencent's WeChat, a hit messaging application on mobile devices, owes part of its success to the overseas marketing teams that hire local foreigners.

As part of its recruitment efforts, Tencent has taken a team to the top US universities, such as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, every year since 2008 to recruit those with a masters in business administration. Chen said each time Tencent recruits about 10 people, most of whom will be deployed in the strategy and investment divisions.

By the end of this year, the company will have added 5,000 more people, boosting its total payroll to more than 20,000 employees, Chen said. About half of them are fresh graduates from Chinese universities, while the rest are experienced professionals.

Looking forward

Chinese companies are going to seek more international talented people as they embrace the global market. An increasing number of foreigners are considering working for Chinese companies because they believe the experience will add depth to their resumes, analysts said.

About 80 percent of the international talent in Chinese companies work in sales and marketing departments and are not based in China, according to Steve Shen, manager of information technology at Shanghai-based head-hunting company Robert Walters Talent Consulting Ltd.

Chinese companies need local talent to run their businesses in Europe and the United States because Chinese employees are not familiar with marketing procedures in the West and find it hard to explore the local markets.

Slowing economic growth in the West is also providing an opportunity for Chinese companies to lure talented foreigners and more candidates are expressing an interest in job offers from China, a country with three decades of constant economic growth, said Shen from Robert Walters.

The steady economic growth has also put Chinese enterprises in a good position to attract experienced people in the research and development sector.

Although only one in five of foreigners working for Chinese enterprises are R&D specialists, the amount is set to surge in the coming years because Chinese companies are planning to localize product designing and manufacturing in target markets, said Shen.

"China has a lack of experienced and skilled researchers and developers. International candidates with work experience are highly competitive in this area," added Shen.

In addition, as an increasing number of Chinese companies transform from outsourcing manufacturers into retailers directly targeting local customers, they need to build a local team strong enough to power the strategic shift. Locals are often the most suitable candidates.

However, ambitious overseas expansion plans pose a series of challenges to the Chinese headquarters. One of the most stubborn ones is how to manage enlarged overseas branches.

"The cultural difference is a big problem for most of the expatriates working in China and for Chinese companies and it may affect foreigners' careers in China," said Shen.

Chinese enterprises will also need to figure out how much administrative powers should be delegated to overseas directors and how to effectively manage the overseas offices.

Another reason that Chinese offers have become popular among overseas job seekers is because the experience will make their future job hunting easier. Foreign companies are more willing to give jobs to those who have worked in China or for Chinese companies because the second largest economy is appealing to many foreign enterprises as a place to do business.

More overseas workers value the experience of working in China more than their pay, according to Shen.

"A China element in a candidate's resume will award them extra points when looking for jobs with international corporations," said Shen. "We are definitely going to see more foreigners working for Chinese employers as the nation's economy continues to grow."

SAN JOSE — The question often comes up in job interviews, says Huawei executive John Roese, who has been recruiting scores of Silicon Valley engineers and programmers to help the Chinese tech giant take on Cisco Systems and other Western rivals.

The answer, Roese says, is: "No, we don't have any relationship with the Chinese government."

But the affable head of Huawei's North American research arm says he is used to confronting the subject. In recent years, concerns about Huawei's ownership scuttled its bid for a major telecommunications contract and forced the company to back away from two acquisitions after U.S. officials objected to the deals.

Huawei is one of China's biggest multinationals, with sizable financial and engineering resources, including 18 research centers around the world. But it's counting heavily on Silicon Valley talent to develop new hardware and software for telecom networks and corporate computer systems.

In the past year, Huawei has more than doubled the staff at its Santa Clara research center, growing to 430 with 200 more hires planned in 2011.

"Santa Clara is going to be a key to our future success," said Bill Plummer, a spokesman at Huawei's North American business headquarters in Plano, Texas.

But Huawei needs to overcome concerns raised by U.S. officials and members of Congress, who have charged that the company's efforts to acquire technology or sell communications gear to U.S. carriers could pose a threat to national security.

Huawei officials deny the allegations and have launched a campaign to reassure the United States.

Earlier this year, the company published an unusual open letter, inviting the U.S. government to investigate its background. In April, for the first time, Huawei published the names and photos of its corporate directors in its annual report — a standard practice for Western corporations.

"If we don't tell you who's running the company, then we're not being transparent. So we're now being very aggressive about that," said Roese. "We're starting a bit late. We were kind of an enigma to some."

Three years ago, Huawei was forced to withdraw a bid to invest in 3Com, the networking company later acquired by Hewlett-Packard, after U.S. officials raised concerns the deal would allow Chinese access to 3Com's technology. Earlier this year, Huawei said it backed away from a deal to buy the assets of 3Leaf Systems, a Silicon Valley cloud computing firm, after an interagency federal panel again raised objections.

A spokeswoman for the government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which has members from such agencies as Defense, Treasury and Homeland Security, said the panel's proceedings are confidential.

But two U.S. senators, Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia and Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona, warned in a public letter that the 3Leaf deal "could pose a serious risk" to the United States, in part because of Huawei's "well-established ties" to the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

Concerns have focused on Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei's 10 years as an army official, in a country where the military often has influence over state-run industries, and on reports that Huawei has received financial support from the Chinese government.

Huawei, which says Ren started the company four years after retiring from the army in 1983, insists the government has no ownership or role in the operation. Huawei officials have blamed competitors for stirring up protectionist sentiment.

"We recognize that because Huawei has a heritage in China and the fact that the U.S. and Chinese governments have at times had a tense relationship, we are unfortunately viewed through the prism of that relationship," Plummer said.

The company lost out on a major contract to supply gear for Sprint last year after objections were raised in Washington, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But Huawei is vying for other U.S. deals and has contracts with major telecom carriers in Europe and Canada, which have "rigorously audited" Huawei's technology, Plummer said.

At its Santa Clara campus, meanwhile, Huawei is working to develop new networking technology, as well as software to manage complex IT systems and new ways to integrate computing, networking and data storage.

Huawei is the world's second-largest supplier of networking gear for telecommunications carriers, according to the Gartner research firm. Now it wants to sell a broad range of technology to other businesses, putting it squarely in competition with Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and others.

It also wants to build systems that carriers can use to offer cloud computing services to their customers. And it's entered the consumer market with a line of smartphones and a new 7-inch Android tablet announced last month.

"We're not an established player" in those markets, Roese acknowledged. But he said that's been a selling point to recent hires, including former engineers at Sun Microsystems, Cisco and other Silicon Valley companies.

Roese describes Huawei as "a very aggressive, 100,000-person startup," with all the resources but far less bureaucracy than other tech giants. "It's a really interesting technology company," he tells job candidates, "that happens to have started in another part of the world."

BANGALORE: As the Chinese pitter-patter into IT services turns into a loud clatter, Indian majors are pushing hard to grab a bigger slice of that market. TCS, Infosys and Wipro plan to shift at least 10% of their new outsourcing projects to Chinese cities of Dalian and Chengdu, for the first time since India’s software exports industry took note of the Chinese threat a decade ago.

Top customers like GE and General Motors are demanding that Indian vendors deliver some services from locations outside India because of geo-political risks and location redundancy. India’s tech behemoths are also realising that by creating local jobs in China, they can gain a bigger share of the Dragonland’s $10-billion-plus outsourcing market.

While TCS plans to increase its existing 1,200-employee base by over five times in the next few years, Infosys will invest $100 million to build a 4,000-professional-strong team. Wipro, the third-biggest software exporter, will have around 1,000 professionals in a year’s time.

“A clear inflection point for China has been clients’ acceptance over the last few months. And despite some risk perceptions, we are selling Infosys China, and not just China, as a new location to customers,” says SD Shibulal, chief operating officer, Infosys. “Over 80% of the work we do in China is for our global customers,” he added. Testing of software applications, engineering design for automobile and consumer durable firms are among projects set to get increasingly shipped to China.

Clearly, China is no longer a pure rival for India Outsourcing Inc. Instead, it is increasingly helping Indian technology vendors position themselves better by offering a choice of delivery centres beyond India to customers. “It’s no more about being rivals,” says Girija Pande, chairman of TCS’ Asia Pacific operations. “We are now seeing more load that can be sent to China. In fact, we are already doing both IT and BPO projects,” added Pande.

Rising wages, attrition rates and increasing scarcity of employable labour are among the top reasons for this shift in the way Indian IT industry has been looking at China. A September report by Goldman Sachs says Infosys’ revenues from China could top $200 million in three years, from $100 million today. TCS’ China revenues are expected to reach $250 million from almost $100 million currently, the report added.

While bidding for global outsourcing contracts, Indian vendors are beginning to break up a project into pure application development and software testing components. Of these, “non customer-facing portions such as testing is increasingly going to China,” says Amneet Singh, vice-president, global sourcing at consultant Everest Group.

Some clients are also concerned about growing geo-political risks in India because of terrorist threats and delicate equations with neighbours such as Pakistan and China. “We received calls from several customers after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Since then, we have noticed China come up more frequently in our discussions," said a CEO at one of the top Indian tech firms that has a development centre in Mumbai.

Another inflection point for China’s growing outsourcing industry is the rise of local firms like HiSoft, NeuSoft and VanceInfo. Some like HiSoft are looking at success stories of Infosys and Cognizant and globalising their operations. HiSoft, for one, got listed on Nasdaq in June and has already started getting customers like GE, UBS and Citibank to offshore work to China.

“There’s a growing need from CIOs to diversify and China is positioned as an ideal complement to India,” says Ross Warner, a spokesman for HiSoft, based out of Beijing. The company started working with GE in Japan eight years ago. “It’s no secret that we look up to their (Infosys) journey and are now focussing to replicate some of that,” adds Warner.

“Moreover, MNCs that aspire to sell into China are often requested by the government to purchase from China. This is a factor motivating MNCs like GE, 3M and Nokia to procure to China,” says James Friedman, analyst at SIG.

However, even as China is set to become a $30-billion outsourcing powerhouse in five years, there are hurdles it needs to overcome. While the country produces more engineers than India, lack of experience in handling large, complex projects remains a worry. Plus, China’s wage rates are a higher than India’s because employers have to spend on social security.

“This is a common mistake which is made because in China, one would have to pay 50% tax to the government plus a premium of 10-15% if the person can speak English,” says Frances Karamouzis, research veep at Gartner.

It's an unfortunate fact of a downturn: declining corporate cash flows and slumping confidence usually induce firms to file fewer patents and slash spending on research and development.

Apparently, China didn't get the memo.

As much of the world invested fewer resources in innovation during the global downturn, Chinese firms spent more on innovative efforts, such as R&D and patent and trademark applications, according to a report by a UN agency.

On Wednesday, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said that patent applications in China jumped 18.2 percent in 2008 and another 8.5 percent in 2009. Over the same period, ZTE, China's second-largest telecom equipment maker, boosted R&D spending 44.8 percent.

In the U.S., patent filings fell 11.7 percent in 2008 and 2009, while companies like General Motors, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft slashed their R&D budget by more than 20 percent from 2008 to 2009. In Europe and Japan new patent filings dropped 7.9 and 10.8 percent, respectively, in 2009.

"China is moving up the value chain and rapidly increasing exports based on domestic innovation, so inevitably it is filing an ever-growing number of patent applications," WIPO's Chief told a news conference as the agency announced its latest findings.

China decided years back that it no longer wants to be the sweatshop of the world. The country's recent investments in innovation at a time when loans and venture capital were sparse reflect its ambitions to become an innovation-oriented nation by 2020.

China's penchant for patents may partly explain why it's shifting away from low-cost manufacturing, as the New York Times reports this morning.

Google has started a large-scale recruitment campaign on the Chinese mainland. Google's recruitment ad showed that the firm is seeking employees covering 26 positions in research and development, products, sales, operation, IT, human resources and marketing.

According to the notice posted, most jobs would be in Shanghai and Beijing but it did not elaborate the quantity of employees the firm is to recruit.

Ever since Google announced its exit from the Chinese mainland this march, many employees of the company have been contacted by domestic internet firms on the purpose of being hired.

The company now sees itself without a few senior officials. Former vice director of Google China R&D Center, Wang Jin, Song Zhongjie, Google China's general manager for sales, and Liu Jun, assistant dean, who was in charge of web search development in Google China Project Research institute all have left their positions.

According to Iresearch, Google's market share in the second quarter declined to 27.3 percent, while its counterpart, Baidu, boasted 70.8 percent. Some of the company's agents like Tianya, also cut off relations with Google.

While industry analysts were worried about the company's development on the mainland, Yu said that its current situation is temporary, and its market grip will be gradually regained.

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.

Telecom equipment provider ZTE is likely to send 250 Chinese employees back as it is obliged to recruit Indian employees in all of its operations in India over the next 3 years.

The move has taken place in the wake of the release of the Government's directive, last month, which expects all the foreign telecom equipment companies in India to employ only Indian engineers.

At present, out of the total 2,300 staffers of ZTE in India, 15% are Chinese. The company has been planning to recruit another 1,000 engineers by March 2011.

The company's unit in India contributes to over 10% its global revenues, which was reported to be $8.8 billion in fiscal 2009-10.

DK Ghosh, Chairman, ZTE Telecom India, "It is part of our localization policy and has nothing to do with the department of telecom (DoT) directive".

Mr. Ghosh added that around 95% of ZTE's manforce in India constitutes engineers. The move, as directed by the Government, will reduce its Chinese staff strength to merely 3%.

The Government's directive, called DoT, was issued in March, asked for a strict adherence of the foreign operators to the new instructions.

By NICK WINGFIELD

Microsoft Corp. said it is investigating allegations of worker abuse at a factory in China that makes computer mice, cameras and other devices for the technology giant.

The move was prompted by a report published this week by a Pittsburgh-based human rights advocacy group, the National Labor Committee, which alleges a factory in Dongguan, China, operated by KYE Systems Corp. overworks young employees and houses them in harsh conditions.

Microsoft devices represent a significant portion of the products made at the factory, though KYE makes products for other companies there as well, according to the report.

"The factory was really run like a minimum security prison," Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, said in an interview.

In a statement issued in Taiwan, where it has headquarters, KYE Systems said it has never hired workers under 16, and that its employees get one day off every seven, with extra hours in peak season but never more than 12 hours a day. It said that while its wages are low by U.S. standards, they are in accordance with Chinese regulations. "We regret that the NLC reported a one-sided story without offering us a chance to explain," the statement said. The company's Web site says it employs between 3,600 and 4,500 workers in China, depending on seasonal demand.

In a blog post on Thursday, Microsoft executive Brian Tobey said, as a result of the National Labor Committee's report, the company has "a team of independent auditors en route to the facility to conduct a complete and thorough investigation."

Mr. Tobey said Microsoft auditors inspect KYE facilities annually and haven't detected violation of child labor laws for the past two years. He said worker overtime "has been significantly reduced" at the factory and that compensation is in line with labor standards for the area where the factory is located.

Mr. Tobey is corporate vice president of manufacturing and operations for the Microsoft unit that makes the Xbox videogame console, the Zune music player and other hardware.

The National Labor Committee report alleges KYE recruits employees many of whom are 16 and 17 years old to work 15-hour shifts six to seven days a week, paying them 65 cents an hour—or 52 cents an hour after deductions for food.

Workers are housed in cramped quarters in factory dormitories and prohibited from talking, listening to music or using the bathroom during work hours, the report says.

The report is another sign of growing scrutiny of the companies the technology industry widely relies on to make electronics products.

In February, Apple Inc. said an internal audit of its suppliers last year uncovered more than a dozen violations of the company's labor policies, including several in which contractors hired underage workers. Apple began auditing worker conditions after reports of worker abuses at Chinese factories that made iPods.
—Ting-I Tsai contributed to this article.

After news last week that Facebook, the world's largest social networking service (SNS), aims to enter the Chinese market, a domestic head-hunting company disclosed that Facebook has hired it to recruit the person to manage its business in China. This signals Facebook's timetable to enter the Chinese market is drawing nearer.

According to the recruiter, Facebook wants to hire a general manager overseeing its Chinese operations and this person would be based in Beijing.

But according to the detailed description of the post, the company also wants this person to lead the SNS game lab team to make products for the western market, and the position may match the requirements for a person leading a research institute in the Chinese market.

Also, the head-hunting firm said that Facebook was hoping the person would be from its headquarters, but the firm does not want to exclude those who are interested in the post to apply.

According to last week's information, Facebook may enter Chinese market as soon as in three months, and this latest recruitment announcement adds fuel to the possibility.

But according to local media reports, in order to enter the Chinese market now, Facebook may only just establish the research institute first. According to the requirements of the position, the products designed by the lab are mainly aimed for the western market, which means that Facebook will not launch products for the Chinese market for a while.

Nevertheless, an insider from the recruiting company said that if Facebook wants to enter the China market, it first needs to set up a management team and begin its relations with the Chinese government, which is only still in its preliminary stages.

US internet giant Google today posted ads for dozens of positions in its China business.

The move suggests it may be rethinking its threat to leave the country over cyber attacks and online censorship.

Google is seeking to hire 40 staff, including engineers, sales managers and research scientists in Beijing, Shanghai and the southern city of Guangzhou, according to advertisements seen on its website.

The job ads - the first since Google threatened to shut down its Chinese language search engine google.cn rather than bow to government censors - could mean the firm planned to stay in China, technology analyst Li Zhi said.

"They are in the process of resolving this issue (with the government)," said Li, a Beijing-based analyst at research firm Analysys International.

"Their business in China won't change too much this year."

Google threatened in January to leave China over what it said were cyber attacks aimed at its source code and at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.

Meanwhile, Google has continued to filter search engine results in China, which has the world's largest number of online users at 384 million.

A spokeswoman for Google China did not respond to emails or phone calls from AFP seeking confirmation of the recruitment drive and the status of Google's talks with Beijing.

Google representatives and Chinese officials were to resume talks in the coming days after a break for China's Lunar New Year holiday, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The talks will centre on whether the US firm can deliver unfiltered internet search results in China, the report said.

Google China spokeswoman Marsha Wang told AFP yesterday she had no updates on plans for talks when asked about the report.

By Yin Hang

Weeks after Google threatened to leave China over hacking allegations, the search engine giant has posted 40 new openings for jobs at its Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou offices.

The company is accepting applications on its website.

Jobs are available in several departments including sales and marketing, human resource management as well as design and engineering.

By late Wednesday, Google China did not respond to email questions sent by the Global Times to confirm the recruitment.

The company recently threatened to exit China after they alleged that people based in the country hacked into its computers and clients' email accounts. As a result, Google said it would no longer restrict content on its Chinese language site.

Google China remains an ideal company to work with for lots of Chinese engineers.

Zhang Mingyu, 28, an IT engineer from Guangzhou, told the Global Times he admires the company's work environment and culture.

"You can realize your own dream there," Zhang said. "So, even if Google China would withdraw from China soon after I work there, it still will be a splendid experience for me."

Zhang Hao, an IT engineer who worked at Baidu, a competitor of Google, told the Global Times that if Google pays him more money, he would definitely go to Google.

Zhang said that he is not worried about Google leaving China because the Chinese market is valuable.

"Google is a big corporation, so naturally it is good at making news. But at the same time, it knows very well how important China is to its development," Zhang said.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Google representatives and Chinese officials will resume talks about the company's future in the country.

ZenithOptimedia, one of Google China's advertising partners, told the Global Times that Google's clients are looking forward to seeing the company staying here.

"Higher audience rate brings in profits to the search engine. Google China is second to no one but Baidu, so naturally it could maintain a large number of its clients," said Steven Chang, chief executive officer of ZenithOptimedia office in China.

Microsoft announced it is cutting its global workforce again. The company says in a report that it will cut a further 800 jobs in various departments worldwide, bringing the number of jobs axed to 58 hundred, 800 more than the target announced this year.

Chen Ranfeng, the spokesman for Microsoft China, says that the China branch is not included in the cutbacks.

Microsoft announced early this year that it would cut 5 thousand jobs by June 2010, which is the biggest job cutting move since Microsoft was founded 34 years ago.

Microsoft says that it will continue recruitment in some key fields, but it didn't mention whether it would further cut the workforce in near future.

Telecom giant Ericsson (ERICb.ST) may hire a few hundred more people in China this year, as it plans to shift some overseas operations to the country, a company source said on Tuesday.

Local media had earlier reported that the Swedish firm would axe 150 jobs, or 5 percent of its total workforce in China, as part of its previously announced global cutback of 5,000 employees, in an effort to curb cost.

But a source who works in the company's human resources department said the firm was likely to hire, instead of firing, people in China this year.

"The technology unit would hire a few hundred staff this year and more people are needed in telecom service unit," said the source who requested anonymity because of the lack of authorisation to speak to media.

A company spokeswoman in Beijing declined to comment on the hiring plan, but described the local media reports as a "rumour".

Ericsson and its Chinese partners won about 26 percent of China Unicom's (0762.HK) 3G network construction orders last month, totalling up to $2.3 billion, according to previous media reports.

Intel is going to cease the operation of its factory in Pudong, Shanghai and transfer the production capacity to Chengdu or Dalian. Over 2000 employees may be moved to new positions. But Intel claimed that Shanghai office’s role in R&D and investment would be reinforced.

Intel will adjust its plan of production and operation in China, including three factories in Shanghai, Chengdu and Dalian. In the following 12 months, the company hopes to integrate the production capacity of Shanghai factory into the factory in Chengdu.

Intel explained that it did not intend to close the factory, but to optimize its manufacturing resources in China. The company’s production capacity will remain in China. And employees will not be dismissed, but will be offered to transfer to new positions instead.

But an Intel engineer who having worked in Intel’s Shanghai factory for more than three years said this was just same as dismissal, as it would be very inconvenient for many employees to move since they have been working in Shanghai for years and settled their families there. He himself has just got married and bought an apartment in Shanghai last year, and can’t move to other cities. He hopes the company to offer reasonable compensation according to the labor law. But Intel has not revealed how it is going to deal with this matter.

Even accepting job transfer, 2000 employees won’t be able to settle down immediately. Intel’s Dalian factory will be put into production in 2010 the earliest. One of the company’s equipment suppliers disclosed that the production of factory might be delayed by half year. As for the Chengdu factory, due to the global financial crisis, the capacity efficiency hasn’t increased much so that the demand for production expansion is also limited.

The Shanghai factory has been in operation for over 12 years, with a total investment of $539 million, including initial investment and additional investments. The company’s management has emphasized for many times that it would further increase its investment, and that the Shanghai factory is established in line with China’s strategy to develop Pudong.

Intel dismantled its channel platform department in Shanghai last December, and over 200 employees were affected. This department, previously one of Intel’s five global departments, was moved to Shanghai in August 2005, marking the first time Intel setting its global department overseas in the company’s more than 40 years’ history.

Shanghai, Dalian, and Chengdu have long been competing for Intel’s investment in China. This adjustment offended the Shanghai government. ??

Intel said the adjustment was made due to the “influence of the current economic situation”. Before the Chinese New Year the company decided to close five factories globally, including those in Malaysia, Philippines, Oregon, and Santa Clara, California, and about 6, 000 employees were affected. Founded in 1968, the factory in Santa Clara is Intel’s last factory left in Silicon Valley.

Paul Otellini, the president of Intel, said at an internal meeting that the company could not rule out the possibility of making a loss during the first fiscal quarter of 2009. Net loss has never occurred in the company since 1986. Some signs shown in its financial statement for the fourth quarter of 2008 indicated a 23% and 90% year-on-year decline in revenues and net profits respectively.

However, Intel also announced three investment plans, including $110 million additional investment into the registered capital of Intel China Ltd, a Shanghai based investment company, seemingly in order to offset the negative influence of the adjustment. Intel will keep its original plan for other business in China, including factories in Chengdu and Dalian, Intel China Research Center, and Intel Capital China Technology Fund Phase II.

"Shanghai will still be Intel’s most important R&D center and headquarters in China." Intel emphasized.

While some companies around the world are responding to the financial crisis with job cuts, the newly issued 3G licenses in China have caused Ericsson to plan a hiring spree of several hundred new employees in China in 2009.

Chinese media previously reported that Ericsson China would cut 150 staff in March 2009, accounting for 5% of its Chinese employees. This was said to be a part of Ericsson's global layoff of 5,000 people. However, a representative from the human resources department of Ericsson China denies the rumor and says their pressure now is from recruitment, not layoffs. Ericsson's technology department in China will hire several hundred new employees this year and its telecommunications service department also needs new blood.

In China Unicom's 3G network construction tender, Ericsson is one of the major winners. China Mobile's chairman Wang Jianzhou also said at the end of January 2009 that the company planned to include Ericsson in the list of its 3G network equipment suppliers.

In its latest financial report published in January 2009, Ericsson said it was seeking to further cut costs by such measures as cutting 5,000 employees, aiming to save SEK10 billion annually before the second half of 2010.

China Unicom is looking to hire managers for three subsidiaries focused on the development of innovative value-added services, according to a company announcement on Jan. 21.

Unicom NewSpace, China Unicom's subsidiary responsible for value-added service development and operations, and its two newly-established subsidiaries respectively responsible for music services and video services, will hire nine managers with experience in music services, video services, Internet advertising, IM and SNS.

By recruiting experienced managers, the company hopes to further develop its broadband, mobile and Internet services, particularly in time for its 3G launch.

China Unicom said previously that it aims to have a profitable WCDMA business by 2010, and innovative 3G value-added services will be crucial.

According to a CCID Consulting report, successful 3G operators will need to develop pioneering applications as well as provide individual and customized services for users.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has announced that it is to increase its TD-SCDMA trained engineers to over 1,200 staff, over an undefined timeframe. The company recently obtained the official approvals for deployment of its TD-SCDMA equipment from Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

NSN was the major solution supplier for China Mobile Shen Zhen TD-SCDMA network’s planning, construction and optimization.

Adds Steven Shaw, head of Services in Greater China region of NSN, “We have gained invaluable experience in working with China Mobile in the Shen Zhen TD-SCDMA network. With our strong base in 2G and rich global experience in 3G deployment, comprehensive TD-SCDMA portfolio, strong local service support and clear evolution path to LTE, we are confident in helping operator customers to fulfill their goals.”

NSN shareholder, Nokia is a 49% holder in a Chinese joint venture, Potevio with China Putian to develop network infrastructure based on the Chinese 3G standard. Potevio was set up in 2005 and has also been the major supplier of equipment to China Mobile's TD-SCDMA trial networks in Tianjin and Qinhuangdao.

Last month, Nokia's vice-president of Greater China sales, David Tang said that the firm would launch a range of handsets based on the Chinese 3G standard.

Macquarie Capital and Seek, one of the largest Australian recruitment Internet companies, have jointly announced plans to invest money into the Chinese online job recruitment website Zhaopin.com, which was started by expatriates over ten years ago.

Macquarie will buy a 29.1% stake in Zhaopin.com, while Seek will pay USD45 million to increase its stake from about 25% to near 43% on a fully diluted basis. Early in 2006, Seek invested USD20 million into Zhaopin.com.

Liu Hao, CEO of Zhaopin.com, is quoted by the Reuters that this round of investment will meet the demand of Zhaopin.com for future development. Liu says that the investment is only a financial investment and Macquarie Group and Seek will not participate in the operation of the company. Zhaopin.com will maintain long-term independent decision-making power.

According to Zhaopin.com, the finances will mainly be used to hire new workers and to supply better services to customers, but it will not be used for acquisitions. In addition, it will expand its business in China's second-tier cities is the company's another focus.

More than half (53 per cent) of UK managers are concerned they can find skilled staff to meet their business needs, according to research by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and exams body Edexcel.

The CBI/Edexcel Education and Skills Survey 2008, which covers 735 firms employing a total of 1.7 million people, found employers were concerned about employees IT skills as well as basic literacy and numeracy.

Fifty six per cent of employers are worried about employees' ability to use computers and 69 per cent are investing in training to raise IT skills of existing staff.

By 2014 it is expected that the UK will need to fill 730,000 extra jobs requiring candidates with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, making a net total of 2.4 million of these jobs in six years.

Yet, 59 per cent are having trouble recruiting. CBI blamed the drop in student levels, and said there has been a 15 per cent slip in engineering and technology graduates over the past decade.

Employers are increasingly looking abroad to find technology skills. A third, 36 per cent are recruiting from India, and 24 per cent are looking to China. Another 35 per cent will look at hiring in Europe in the next three years. Larger firms are twice as likely as smaller ones to recruit from the expanded EU, such as Poland.

CBI deputy director-general John Cridland says: "A worrying number of employers have little confidence that they will be able to plug their skills gaps. Too many firms also say poor basic skills are hampering customer service and acting as a drag on their business's performance."

TANG Jun, a poster boy of the Chinese IT industry, was appointed yesterday as the president and chief executive officer of South China-based private firm Newhuadu Industrial Group Co, after a 14-year career in Microsoft China and Shanda Entertainment.

He will be paid a record income package valued at one billion yuan (US$140 million), including shares and warrants, the former Shanda president said at a press conference in Beijing yesterday.

Tang, 46, replaced Fuzhou-based Newhuadu's founder Chen Fashu as president and CEO and he will manage the company's daily operations, strategic development, platform operations and external investment, Chen said.

"I will use my experience to make Newhuadu the most influential firm in China," Tang said yesterday.

The business scope of Newhuadu, founded in 1997, covers retail, real estate, mining, high-tech and tourism industries. It has invested in firms like Zijin Mining, the country's No. 1 gold miner. Newhuadu aims to list the firms it had invested in on the domestic market, including Zijin Mining, by the end of this year, Chen said.

Zijin is set to debut its shares in the domestic market this month and Tang's income package includes Zijin's shares.

Tang, who studied in Japan and the United States in his 20s, joined Shanghai-based Shanda four years ago after working as Microsoft China's president for 10 years.

Tang helped Shanda go public on Nasdaq in May 2004, which made the game firm's founder Chen Tianqiao the richest man on the Chinese mainland that year. Tang also helped Shanda to find partners like Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Changhong.

During his four-year tenure, Tang bought out Sina.com and acquired South Korea's Actoz Soft by paying US$91.7 million for a 29-percent share.

HONG KONG, April 2 (Reuters) - Baidu.com Inc (BIDU.O: Quote, Profile, Research) has poached Apple Inc's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) former China head for the role of chief operating officer, the latest high-level executive shuffle at China's largest search engine firm.

Peng Ye, who oversaw all business operations in China for Apple as the U.S. firm's country general manager, joins Baidu on the heels of the appointment of ex-General Motors (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) executive Jennifer Li to the post of chief financial officer. [ID:nSHA340039]

Ye's posting takes effect April 25.

Baidu maintains an edge over Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) as the most popular search engine in the world's No. 2 Internet arena. China had 210 million Internet users at the end of 2007, second only to the United States, and that Web population is set to become the world's largest in 2008.

NEW YORK - Chinese Internet portal operator Sina Corp. said Monday that its board chairman, Yongji Duan, departed from the board, effective immediately.

Duan is no longer a director and is also no longer on the company's compensation committee.

The company did not disclose a reason for Duan's departure.

Sina said it named the Yan Wang, who had been the vice chairman of its board, as acting chairman, effective immediately.

Sina shares fell 49 cents to $35.03 in afternoon trading.

SHANGHAI, March 21 (Reuters) - Top Chinese Web search firm Baidu.com Inc (BIDU.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it had appointed Jennifer Li as chief financial officer. Li previously worked for General Motors China (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Baidu said in a statement.

Shawn Wang, Baidu's previous chief financial officer, died in an accident late last year.

The Hong Kong-headquartered Chinese online and mobile media group Tom Group announced its 2007 financial results, and the once-profitable company is now operating at a loss and Tom Group Limited CEO Tang Meijuan, in the position for the last five years. has resigned due to "personal reasons". Operating Director Yang Mengguo will become the new CEO.

TOM's revenues were 2.68 billion HK dollars ($347 million) in 2007, down 4.2 percent from the year before. In 2007, TOM's losses were 297 million HK dollars ($38 million) compared to a profit of 32 million HK dollars ($4.1 million) in the prior year. The losses in 2007 were mainly due to a drop in mobile-valued added services (MVAS) revenues as the top 2 Chinese carriers, China Mobile and China Unicom, placed new restrictions on MVAS providers. More details in the releases here and here.

The losses included an HK$127 million impairment charge in its digital business after the mobile operators changed their policies, which hurt all MVAS players in China. It also lost HK$104 million from Tom Eachnet, an online auction venture with Ebay in China.

Chinese online game operator The9 Limited has announced that its senior vice president and CFO, Hannah Lee, is resigning her position effective February 2008 to pursue other interests. The company says it is searching for a new CFO, and expects to announce that person's appointment prior to Lee's departure.

The9 both operates and develops games in the Chinese market, either directly or through affiliates. Most notably, it operates Blizzard's World of Warcraft in the region, in addition to Granado Espada and its first proprietary title, Joyful Journey West in mainland China.

The company has also recently obtained licenses to operate Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, Ragnarok Online 2, Emil Chronicle Online, Huxley, FIFA Online 2, Audition 2, Field of Honor and the original Audition. It currently has two additional proprietary titles, Fantastic Melody Online and Warriors of Fate Online, in development.

Said Lee, "It has been my pleasure to serve as the Chief Financial Officer of The9 for over four years. I believe the company remains well- positioned in the growing online game industry. With its rich and diversified game portfolio, I believe The9 will continue to enjoy long-term growth and deliver sustained growth for its employees and shareholders."

By Sol E. Solomon, ZDNet Asia
Monday, February 11, 2008 09:05 PM

Skills in business application and software development, amongst other fields, are expected to be in high demand across the Asia-Pacific region's more developed markets. However, it could take as long as three years in some countries to train enough talent to meet today's demands, according to industry watchers.

As the region sees increased development work, and with more functions being undertaken in-house by companies, there will be further boost in demand for .Net and J2EE developers, networking engineers and professionals with SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation skills, DP Search director Andrew Sansom said in an e-mail interview.

Kelly Chua, consultant for IT and telecommunications (IT&T), Hudson Singapore, said the country's hot IT jobs continue to be in the field of business applications.

"The high demand for SAP expertise and business-specific applications is mainly due to the constant need for organizations to align their businesses to market changes. This, in turn, affects the related IT applications," Chua explained.

According to Roger Olofsson, associate director at RobertWalters recruitment services' IT division, regional growth has further spurred more organizations to upgrade older ERP systems.

"Most firms were holding back in the difficult years [of] 2003 and 2004," Olofsson said in a phone interview. "When the economy recovered, they found they needed to expand [their IT capabilities] to compete [since] IT raises their competitive advantage."

"In Singapore, demand for IT expertise is growing as greatly as it did in the 1990s. Lots of companies are moving from the United States, Tokyo, Europe and other higher-cost areas," he said.

Big demand in big money
The region's financial sector continues to be a big employer of tech professionals.

In Hong Kong, for example, IT roles that specialize in investment banking such as frontoffice support, risk management, business analysis, development and project management, are high in demand, said Ellis Seder, manager for IT&T, Hudson Hong Kong.

"Increased volatility in the banking world will lead banks to review market- and credit-risk processes and systems," said Seder. "As such, they will invest heavily this year to update risk systems.

In Japan, sales and pre-sales roles are also highly sought after by both local small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well as multinational corporations.

"We forecast that in 2008, we will see steady demand for candidates strong in pre-sales, sales and project development," Mike Armstrong, head of IT&T for Hudson Tokyo said in a phone interview.

"There is still a war for talent," he added, noting that for candidates, "being bilingual in English and Japanese would help" secure their ideal jobs.

As for China, jobs in OS (operating system) kernel development with low-level system programming such as C coding, look set to be high in demand this year, said Raymond Wong, general manager for Tony Keith, a subsidiary of Hudson China. "An increasing number of kernel and system-level projects are being moved to China from the R&D (research and development) headquarters of major multinational companies," said Wong.

"In the early days of software development in China, most development projects coming from overseas were limited to application-level or quality assurance and localization projects. The kernel technical aspects were controlled and finished in the home countries," he explained. "Now, due to the maturity of the Chinese IT environment and current availability of IT talent in China, more OS kernel development projects are being transferred to China."

Competing for talent
However, Chua noted that the supply of IT expertise in the region is unable to meet the current demand. "It is always a challenge to find individuals with specific application background," she said.

Singapore, for example, is not producing enough IT professionals, Olofsson said. "Our clients in Singapore are recruiting more from overseas."

Chua added that Hudson is seeing demand for candidates in the financial services sector, with companies competing with Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo for the limited talent pool.

Wong said the job market in mainland China, too, lacks enough suitable technology candidates to satisfy employer needs.

"We forecast that it will take two to three years to train enough talent to meet the demands we face today," he said. "China is largely short of suitable talent for more senior positions, especially candidates with strong English skills and related experience in their fields."

Because of a lack of available talent in China, some organizations have had to recruit people with technical skills that are related, but not specific, to their roles.

Companies have also taken to hiring candidates who have potential and training them on the job, Wong said. "This creates more openings for tech talent who would not ordinarily find jobs," he noted.

In addition, China companies have often resorted to recruiting candidates overseas for senior positions.

"This can present a good opportunity for local engineers to gain knowledge and experience from their foreign counterparts," Wong said. "It is also a challenge as they are forced to integrate and work closely with foreign supervisors and colleagues."

"[At the end of the day], more [work] experience is what's required to bring our domestic talent up to speed, and this is something that will only improve with time," he added.

And while DP Search's Sansom noted that the current demand-supply situation is "balanced right now", he added that high-quality hires are not available on the market for long "so employers have to be quick to catch the good ones".

SAP Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) finished the year strongly with fourth quarter software revenue sales growth of 44 percent in constant currencies, compared with the previous corresponding period, to Euros 18 billion.

According to the German software behemoth, APJ remained its fastest growing region with software revenue rising 32% year-on-year in constant currencies to Euros 482 billion.

Total revenues for SAP APJ grew 20% year-on-year in constant currencies to Euros 1.275 billion.

“2007 was a terrific year for SAP Asia Pacific Japan, with revenue growth in India, Greater China, Japan and South East Asia providing key impetus for the region,” said Geraldine McBride, President and CEO, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

“We are continuing to invest in this region, hiring more than 3300 new people in 2007 to help take our exciting array of products and services to market.”

“Our customers in this region remain motivated to grow their businesses and need to derive real value from the systems they implement,” added McBride.

“In 2007, we expanded operations into new markets in the region and are on track to grow consistently over the next two years,” McBride continued.

For the full year of 2007, SAP APJ’s software and software related service revenue grew 24% in constant currencies to Euros 959 billion, while Q4 software and software related service revenues grew 32% in constant currencies to Euros 304 billion.

SAP said it continues to invest in maintaining its leadership position in the fast growing Asian region, adding 3384 full time employees in 2007, bringing the regional total to more than 9500 full-time equivalent employees.

In the fourth quarter, SAP also established its first sales operations in Cambodia working with an SAP Business All-in-One partner in Phnom Penh. This follows SAP APJ’s expansion into Vietnam in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh earlier in 2007.

SAP India, the fastest growing country for SAP globally, continued to expand operations in 2007 with the acquisition of YASU Technologies and the SAP Executive Board’s continued commitment to invest USD1 billion in the country by 2010.

“SAP Asia Pacific Japan also remains the leader in SAP’s fastest growing customer segment: SME,” said McBride.

“SME delivered a strong performance each quarter in 2007 and grew at more than ten new names per working day. SME customers now make up nearly 70% of SAP’s customer base in the region.”

Success for SME in Asia Pacific and Japan will continue to be driven by a strong partner ecosystem and an innovative solution portfolio.

In 2008 SAP will continue to roll-out its latest innovation for the lower midmarket, SAP Business ByDesign, a software-as-a-service solution specifically designed for SMEs. Successfully launched in 2007 in China and recently in Singapore, SAP believes its Business ByDesign portfolio will add to the SME momentum in Australia and India in 2008.

SHANGHAI, China, Jan. 16 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Linktone Ltd. , a leading provider of interactive media and entertainment products and services to consumers in China, announced today the resignation of Chief Financial Officer -- Colin Sung, effective January 31, 2008. Mr. Sung has also resigned as a member of the board of directors of Linktone.

Mr. Sung is expected to remain with Linktone in a consulting capacity for a transition period in order to assist the company with the planned strategic investment by PT Media Nusantara Citra Tbk. Mr. Sung informed the company that he is leaving his position as Linktone's Chief Financial Officer to pursue other interests.

Foo Him Tiem, the Deputy Chief Financial Officer of Linktone, has been appointed as the acting Chief Financial Officer of the company. Ms. Foo Him Tiem joined Linktone in June 2004. Linktone plans to begin its search for a permanent Chief Financial Officer and will announce a successor when this process is completed.

Mr. Sung said, "It has been my pleasure to serve as Chief Financial Officer of Linktone for the past 2 and a half years. I believe that the company is well-positioned with strong initiatives and ample opportunity to achieve long-term value for its shareholders."

Michael Li, Linktone's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "On behalf of the board of directors and Linktone's management, I would like to extend our sincere thanks to Colin. His hard work and contributions are most appreciated by the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors." Mr. Li added, "We are also committed to identifying a highly qualified permanent CFO in the near term."

About Linktone Ltd.

Linktone Ltd. is one of the leading providers of wireless interactive entertainment services to consumers and advertising services to enterprises in China. Linktone provides a diverse portfolio of services to wireless consumers and corporate customers, with a particular focus on media, entertainment and communications. These services are promoted through the Company's and our partners cross-media platform which merges traditional and new media marketing channels, and through the networks of the mobile operators in China. Through in-house development and alliances with international and local branded content partners, the Company develops, aggregates, and distributes innovative and engaging products to maximize the breadth, quality and diversity of its offerings.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains statements of a forward-looking nature. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these forward- looking statements by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar statements. The accuracy of these statements may be impacted by a number of business risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated, including risks related to: the risk that Linktone will not be able to locate and retain suitable people for its board of directors and middle and senior management; current or future changes in the policies of the PRC Ministry of Information Industry and the mobile operators in China or in the manner in which the operators enforce such policies; the risk that other changes in Chinese laws and regulations, or in application thereof by other relevant PRC governmental authorities, could adversely affect Linktone's financial condition and results of operations; the risk that Linktone will not be able to compete effectively in the wireless value-added services market in China for whatever reason, including competition from other service providers or penalties or suspensions for violations of the policies of the mobile operators in China; the risk that Linktone will not be able to develop and effectively market innovative services; the risk that Linktone will not be able to effectively control its operating expenses in future periods or make expenditures that effectively differentiate Linktone's services and brand; and the risks outlined in Linktone's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its registration statement on Form F-1 and annual report on Form 20-F. Linktone does not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information, except as required under applicable law.

NOTICE TO INVESTORS

This announcement is neither an offer to purchase nor a solicitation of an offer to sell securities by any person. The offer for the outstanding shares of Linktone described in this announcement has not commenced. Any offers to purchase or solicitations of offers to sell will be required to be made pursuant to offer documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") in accordance with U.S. securities laws.

The offer documents required under U.S. laws, including Linktone's recommendation statement, will contain important information, and shareholders and potential investors are urged to read them carefully when they become available before making any decision with respect to any offer. The recommendation statement and other documents filed with or furnished to the SEC are available for free at the SEC's website ( http://www.sec.gov ). Free copies of these documents can also be obtained by directing a request to Linktone through the investor relations contacts listed above.

For more information, please contact:

Edward Liu
Linktone Ltd.
Tel: +86-21-6361-1583
Email: edward.liu@linktone.com

Brandi Piacente
The Piacente Group, Inc.
Tel: +1-212-481-2050
Email: brandi@thepiacentegroup.com

Washington: International Business Machines Corp is increasing its employee count, with most of the growth coming in India and China, as well as other emerging markets, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The IBM has been hiring steadily in emerging markets, and its total work force in the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - will approach 100,000 people by the end of the year, up from about 85,000 at the end of 2006, the report quoted a source familiar with its hiring as saying.

At the end of 2006, IBM employed 355,000 people around the world. A forecast of the worldwide employment total for the end of 2007 wasn't available.

This year, the IBM's employment in India is likely to reach 73,000 people, up from 52,000 last year. Employment in China will top 13,000, up about 30 per cent from 10,000 last year, the source said.

IBM spokesman Edward Barbini confirmed the accuracy of the numbers. He said some of the emerging markets' employment reflects outsourcing of services, software development and manufacturing work that used to be done in Europe and the US, according to the report.

In America, much of Google’s success is attributed to its brilliant employees. In China, there’s no reason that the situation would be any different, but as a bonus, the company could gain a competitive edge by hiring locals.

Google’s poor understanding of Chinese culture has been pinpointed as a reason for its failures in that country; an old Baidu commercial even portrayed Google as a Westerner with embarrassingly poor Chinese-language skills. Hiring Chinese citizens might be an ideal way to overcome this image.

Furthermore, the practice could be beneficial to Google in many other areas. “[T]he nation has such a huge talent potential,” Kai-Fu Lee, the president of Google China, told the AP. “I think there will undoubtedly be innovation in China.”

Innovation is exactly what Google needs - the company’s search market share is approximately one-third of Baidu’s, and has shown little improvement over the past six months. Also, Google’s a bit weak in the mobile department, and cell phones and texting are absolutely taking off in China.

Of course, nothing’s guaranteed to work - it’s not like Google hasn’t tried to reverse its fall in China before. Eric Schmidt has given the division a pretty long leash, however, so no heads are likely to roll in the near future.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it would hire 1,000 engineers in the current fiscal year, joining the current 5,000 staff in China.

"We will add 1,000 engineers," Zhang Yaqin, the company's chairman in the mainland, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference. "There will be researchers, but most will be involved with product," he said, without elaborating.

The comments come after Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said earlier this month that the Chinese market was important to Microsoft but Beijing needed to do more to protect intellectual property rights.

Microsoft has said more than a fifth of its software running globally was pirated.

PEOPLE working in the information technology industry earned more than employees in all other industries on average last year, according to the Shanghai Statistics Bureau.

They were followed by workers in the finance, electricity, gas and water, real estate and scientific research sectors, the bureau said.

The wage gap between different sectors widened last year. The average wage in the IT sector was 3.55 times of the average salary for those in the service sector, the lowest paid group of workers, while in 2000, the average wage in the highest sector was 3.24 times that of the lowest.

From 2000 to 2006, wages in the manufacturing industry grew 13.3 percent annually, and wages for the service sector grew 14.6 percent, the bureau said.

Local employees earned 29,569 yuan (US$3,937) a year on average last year, up 10.2 percent from a year earlier.

BEIJING (Reuters) - The chief executive of Microsoft Corp's Greater China business, Chen Yongzheng, has resigned, the world's largest software maker said on Wednesday.

In a statement on its China Web site, Microsoft said its global vice president, Zhang Yaqin, would take over as acting Greater China chief while it sought a permanent replacement.

The New York Times reported on its Web site that the National Basketball Association (NBA) had hired Chen to head a Chinese subsidiary that it is setting up, a move highlighting the growing importance of China to the sport and to the NBA.

Francisco Partners' investment in DarwinSuzsoft and Sierra Atlantic's acquisition of ArrAy highlight increasing focus on Chinese outsourcing capabilities.

Mark Botticelli has learned valuable lessons about China. For one, employees expect cash bonuses before important holidays, like the Chinese New Year. And horizontal organizations don't work.

"Hierarchy is important," says Botticelli, VP of engineering in the mobile solutions division at Trimble, which makes software for devices used by delivery people and other mobile workers. "The project manager needs to go home and tell his wife he has 14 people working for him."

Trimble eased its way through these cultural challenges three years ago by hiring Chinese outsourcer Suzsoft to provide engineering services. This is a path more U.S. companies are likely to follow, making companies like Suzsoft--now DarwinSuzsoft since being acquired by Darwin Partners last year--increasingly popular.

As a measure of that popularity, private equity firm Francisco Partners last week said it would invest $48 million and take a majority stake in DarwinSuzsoft. The investment will be used for acquisitions and organic growth of the U.S. company, which employees 800 Chinese engineers. Also last week, Sierra Atlantic, a U.S. IT services firm with 1,100 developers in Hyderabad, India, said it's acquiring ArrAy, a U.S. company with 200 engineers in Guangzhou and Shanghai.

It's not just the small services providers gearing up: IBM, Tata Consultancy Services, and others have plans to hire thousands more engineers in China. Oracle late last month set up a second Chinese development center to support software partners and integrators, and introduced a computer science program for vocational schools in a deal with the Chinese government.

Companies doing offshore development in China say they're paying salaries that are 25% to 40% lower than what they'd pay in India, without the high staff turnover rates in that country. Chet Gapinski,VP of engineering at Crossbeam Systems, a maker of security systems, steered his company to China last year after facing some of those problems in India. Crossbeam hired ArrAy for a "hybrid" approach that keeps project managers in the United States and engineers in China, with both sides making regular visits to the other country.

Crossbeam initially had difficulty getting U.S. visitors' visas for Chinese engineers, a problem ArrAy smoothed over, Gapinski says. It also found that Chinese engineers can't work on some security technologies deemed sensitive by the U.S. government. In China, experienced service providers also can prevent problems dealing with government, which is closely involved in business.

Trimble, which employs 30 of DarwinSuzsoft's Chinese engineers, has expanded its relationship beyond developing custom apps for a Hong Kong customer to include maintenance for U.S. and Chinese customers and development work on Trimble products.

Botticelli initially was concerned about lax intellectual property protection in China but found Suzsoft's security measures more than adequate. English skills aren't nearly as good as in India, so Trimble requires its Chinese engineers to attend weekly English classes. One sign of success in China: Trimble plans to ramp up its team there to handle new products coming out next year.

Many multinational hi-tech firms in China are facing stagnation or even declining market share as Chinese competitors secure the emerging mid-range market for hi-tech goods.

McKinsey research shows that 30 to 75 percent of future growth in the global hi-tech industry will be in this mid-range segment, defined as products priced between 30 percent and 50 percent less than their premium counterparts.

Chinese hi-tech firms are quickly edging out global firms in capturing the emerging mid-range market. By defining innovation differently and looking for value throughout the business system, Chinese firms get more out of every R&D dollar spent, allowing them to launch goods cheaper and quicker than their global competitors.

Worryingly for global firms, enormous inefficiencies in their own R&D processes mean Chinese companies have a huge scope for productivity, cost and innovation gains. Many multinationals are aggressively hiring Chinese R&D managers and collaborating with global technical service partners to implement streamlined R&D processes.

Even more worryingly, as soon as Chinese manufacturers secure the global market for mid-range goods, they will gain the cost and scale advantages needed to move up the value chain into premium products. From there, it''''s just a matter of time before they capture high-end share from foreign firms in China and, eventually, in more developed markets.

For global manufacturers, achieving competitiveness in the mid-range segment will not be easy. Years of cumulative R&D experience have been directed at hi-tech innovation and superior quality, and as a result, products are often over-engineered for Chinese customers.

One European supplier of industrial components, for example, rigorously tests its highly engineered products to ensure a 5- to 10-year lifespan, but sells to Chinese manufacturers whose products only last three years.

Global tech players need to completely rethink their R&D approach and rediscover the lost art of low-cost R&D. They must ask what kind of products customers are demanding, and then redesign their R&D processes to meet these lower specifications and cost points.

Perhaps the only truly effective way they can do this is to bring their R&D capabilities to China, much as they have already done with manufacturing.

In doing so, global companies need to avoid the temptation to bring in too many expatriate engineers who implement traditional R&D processes that are unsuitable in China.

Chinese engineers already have the required technical know-how, so firms only need to bring in a few foreign experts to hone specific skills, such as the ability to translate consumer needs into technical specifications, instilling standardized R&D processes, maintaining end-to-end oversight, and designing a local production solution that best balances cost, quality and stability.

Rather than building their own localized R&D teams from scratch, firms could also acquire a local competitor and take over the company''s R&D operations and processes. Its products could then be subsumed under the global brand, or retained as a sub-brand to avoid diluting the premium brand''s image.

Some companies have already succeeded at localizing R&D to tap into the low-cost approaches of its Chinese counterparts. One global medical equipment maker, for instance, increased its market share from 18 to 45 percent by localizing its R&D processes to better meet the needs - and budgets - of potential customers in China.

Motorola and Nokia quickly identified what Chinese consumers wanted and could afford, and now develop mobile phones that span the entire price range. Together, they now capture over 50 percent of all mobile phone sales in China.

Other global manufacturers hoping to follow in their footsteps must go under a major mindset shift to make the necessary transition from "Made in China" to "Designed in China, for China".

Those companies who do not quickly take steps to produce the mid-range products currently in demand will be left behind in the world''s most important emerging market. From there, it will be much harder to defend global market share against the rising tide of Chinese hi-tech goods.

Ingo Beyer von Morgenstern is a Shanghai-based director at McKinsey & Company. Paul Gao is a partner at McKinsey''s Shanghai office

Source:China Daily

HONG KONG, July 13 - China Netcom Group Corp. (Hong Kong) Ltd. , the smaller of the country's two fixed-line operators, said its vice chairman Tian Suning had resigned due to a heavy workload from his other business.

Executive director Miao Jianhua also resigned and had taken a position at China United Telecommunications Corp., the company said in a statement late on Thursday.

Li Jianguo has been appointed to replace Miao as an executive director and chairman of the board's supervision committee with effect from July 12.

Li holds a senior management position in Netcom's parent, China Network Communications Group Corp. and was an executive director of China Unicom Ltd. .

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - Alibaba.com has appointed Maggie Wu as its new chief financial officer, a spokeswoman for the Chinese internet firm told XFN-Asia.

Wu will also join the company's board as an executive director, the spokeswoman said.

Wu will commence duties as CFO at the end of this month.

Before joining Alibaba.com, Wu worked as a partner in audit practice at KPMG in Beijing.

Previously, Alibaba Group CFO Joseph Tsai also acted as the finance chief of Alibaba.com's operations.

Following a recent reorganization, Alibaba.com became a wholly-owned business-to-business subsidiary of Alibaba Group that acts independently from its parent.

While Wu will take charge of Alibaba.com's financial affairs, Tsai will remain CFO of Alibaba Group.

NEW DELHI: Engineering and technology firms in the United Kingdom are turning to India, China and South Africa to fulfill their skills requirement, a latest survey has said.

In the UK, 48 per cent of the companies in the sector have recruited people from overseas in the last 12 months to cover specific skills shortages, a survey by Institution of Engineering and Technology said, indicating a major chunk of this was carried out in India, China and South Africa.

UK firms are turning to countries such as India, China and South Africa to plug the skills gap," it said.

The survey cautioned that the skill shortage is unlikely to improve in the short or medium term. This is likely to drive the companies to countries like India where cheap labour is available.

Proportion of companies that are expected to face difficulties in recruiting adequate qualified engineers, technicians or technologists over the next four years had risen to 51.8 per cent in 2007 from 40.2 per cent in 2006, said the survey, which took into account 500 respondents.

"The engineering and technology sector is vital to the future prosperity of the UK's economy and an increase in skill shortages puts the future growth, success and competitive advantage of many businesses into serious doubt.

"The UK desperately needs to increase the pool of engineers and technicians to meet the demand," IET Director of Professional Operations Paul Jackson said.

The IET survey builds on information from 2006 and shows that although sector is growing, only 56 per cent of respondents believed they would be able to recruit enough people into engineering and technical roles this year.

The survey also found more than 70 per cent of companies in the UK are struggling to recruit experienced or mid career level staff, which could threaten growth and competitiveness.

It revealed that recruitment of women in the UK has remained static with just seven per cent of the engineering and technology workforce represented by the fairer sex.

The proportion of women in the sector would remain the same for the coming next four years as well, IET projected.

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Motorola CIO Patricia Morrison talks about recruiting and retaining talent in the global marketplace, innovation in IT and developing a process for integrating acquisitions.

Four of the five business unit CIOs who work for you are women. How do you happen to have so many women in top IT positions at Motorola?

In a couple of cases, they were promoted, and in others, they were hired from the outside. When you have an opening, you make sure you have a diversity of candidates, in gender, experience and other ways.

Given all the concerns in the industry about attracting women to IT, would you personally choose a woman for a job if all other variables were roughly equal?

I don't think that way. It's valuable to have diversity in my team -- not so much to have a woman. I consider what will make my team better. That can include personality. One of my CIOs brings consumer products experience into my team. One had supply chain experience and brought an engineering perspective. One of my CIOs has a Ph.D. in art history and was a curator at [New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art]. So it's really looking at all the unique things that people bring.

How can companies attract young women to a career in IT?

It's not unique to women, but it's a problem, if you are talking about getting kids into the IT profession from an educational standpoint. There's a lot in the media about outsourcing, and that gives misimpressions about the IT opportunity. That's one dynamic that's making people gravitate away from IT as a profession.

I recently had lunch with a group of female engineering students and asked what interested them in the engineering profession. It was a consistent view that the No. 1 thing to motivate them was their fathers. So there's got to be a feeling of confidence when you come into a difficult profession, whether it is engineering or IT. That confidence is very important.

You mean their fathers instilled in them a sense of confidence?

Yes, because IT is hard -- not that business isn't hard or nursing isn't hard. Confidence is a leadership quality. What the profession is about is problem-solving. It's not about computation so much; it's not only about programming, but about solving problems. Some of them are big, hairy business problems you are solving. Some are usability problems for products. There's a lot of art and finesse that we don't talk about when we try to attract women to the profession.

Is IT worker retention a concern for you?

We talk about retaining people every month in my operating reviews in China and India. In those regions, there's a lot of job-shopping going on, so much that it reminds me of the heyday of the IT bubble, where people changed jobs every two months. For our growth and what we're doing at Motorola in those regions, we need leaders on the ground and in IT. We need to support the growth of R&D, and we need to be where the work is. It's very important, but it's hard to retain them.

Any ideas on how to deal with that?

We don't really know yet. It's an emerging trend. We know that what motivates IT people is, "Does my customer really appreciate my work?" But how did we get to the point where we train a person and suddenly they go down the street for 20 percent to 30 percent increases in pay? It's the nature of the markets there right now.

You have a strong education background in music and math. What do those have to do with preparation for IT work?

Music programs in schools are critical. I studied music and was a math major in college. I'm actually a right-brained person with a holistic way of looking at things. Music study tends to make you think differently about how things work together, whether orchestra, choral or theater. You learn it's not the individual that makes the outcome, but it's all the things working in harmony. That's like running a project in IT or business.

How is IT at Motorola influencing the development of the company's products?

Innovation comes from solving real customer problems. We use our own products, and we have a pretty significant impact on product development. Almost 6,000 Motorola Q handhelds have been adopted in our IT [operations] because it is an enterprise device with 23 apps running on it.

What handheld device do you use?

I use a 3G Q, announced recently. I use it for e-mail and voice and for everything. As a matter of fact, I rely less and less on my laptop. I would take a laptop if I were doing a big Word document or a spreadsheet, but I'm not a big spreadsheet junkie. I have to tell you, I don't see a lot of need to have a laptop. I travel about 60 percent of the time all over the world. [The handheld] works in all the networks around the world, but not Japan, which is unique. But I can get applications on the Q and can deploy to the Q anything I can move through our mobile portals. I can do approvals for workflow and see my reports. I can do a NetMeeting live on a Q. The BlackBerry is a fabulous e-mail device, but there's a lot I can't do on it.

How is the integration work going following the recent acquisitions of Good Technology and Symbol Technologies?

I'm intimately involved with that. We've started to create a repeatable process for integrating companies. For example, with Symbol, you do basic things right away, like HR integration and setting up e-mail and Internet. For things like product portfolio integration and order-taking integration, we've started using business process management tools to create dialogue around where the processes of the two companies intersect and how to create revenue synergy. That has gone really well. BPM has been very helpful. We've also learned it doesn't pay to just rip out one of the ERP systems of the two companies being merged. We use parts of both ERP systems.

What does Motorola do best, and what does it most need to improve upon?

I really think having innovation at the core of the culture here is very powerful for Motorola. You see it everywhere you go, in every function, and not just R&D. It's an empowering environment to work in. [CEO] Ed Zander has made Motorola exciting and fast-paced, and it permeates the culture. If you talk to people who've been here a long time, they see an enormous difference.

In terms of improvements, the thing that makes me most crazy is the big company bureaucracy, which is not unique to Motorola. Sometimes IT people want to control everything for good reasons, such as securing company information. But the company also faces tough competing demands, especially in the consumer market. So my challenge is solving the bureaucracy and finding ways to free it up.

THE search is on for people with vocational skills to enter a citywide contest next year covering 180 professions, ranging from car repairs to Web-page design.

Ninety-six winners of last year's contest stepped up yesterday to receive their awards, according to the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau.

Nearly 9,000 people signed up to take part in last year's contest, including digital machine operators, fashion designers and hairdressers.

"About 80 percent of the participants were workers in enterprises, and most of them are working in the front line," said Zhu Yanmin, an official in the Shanghai Vocational Skill Testing Center, which sponsored the contest.

"But there is a trend for more university students to take part in the contest, as they realize the importance of raising their vocational abilities," Zhu said.

Nearly 4,000 participants who were identified as qualified in the contest have been granted professional qualification certificates by the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau, without having to sit a qualification exam.

Xuhui District won the gold medal yesterday for organizing 1,191 participants, with 14 people making the top three places in the contest's final round.

Workers in enterprises, students and the unemployed in the city can sign up for the competition.

"We also encourage foreigners in the city to participate in the contest, but there were none having yet registered," said Zhu.

Participants can sign up for next year's preliminary contest at their local vocational training centers.

BEIJING: Google, owner of the world's most-used Internet search site, is planning to more than double the number of engineers it has in China to help win users in the world's second- biggest Internet market.

The company aims to have between 200 and 300 engineers in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai in a year's time, Google China's president, Lee Kai-fu, said after a press briefing Friday in Beijing. Google has more than 100 engineers in the nation, he said.

Google plans to hire "thousands of people" for its Beijing development center to create services for China's more than 137 million Internet users, the company's chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, said last April. The Mountain View, California, company added online map and Internet spreadsheet services last month in a bid to catch Beijing's Baidu.com, which has a China market share three times larger than Google's.

"Google is already hiring people away from Baidu," Florian Pihs, assistant vice-president at the Beijing-based researcher Analysys International, said Friday by telephone.

"Google is after people who are highly coveted not only by Baidu," but by Microsoft other companies, Pihs said.

The search company is planning to open a development center in Shanghai this summer, Google's Lee said, declining to provide further details. An announcement about the center will be made in a few weeks, he said.

In the fourth quarter, Google's share of the Chinese search market rose to 17 percent from 16 percent in the previous three-month period, according to Analysys. Baidu's share rose to 58 percent from 57 percent, while Yahoo!'s was unchanged at 13 percent.

Google on Friday began offering a service that allows users to search for information in Chinese-language books, Lee said. The company began offering search services for mobile phones in December last year in partnership with China Mobile, the nation's biggest wireless carrier.

In January, Google bought a stake in Shenzhen Xunlei Network Technology, a Chinese company that helps users download movies, music and software from the Internet.

Baidu's search revenue could grow 15 percent on a quarterly basis during 2007, slower than Google's rate in China of between 20 percent and 25 percent, according to a Feb. 2 Credit Suisse report.

By Dune Lawrence and John Liu Bloomberg