Recruiting in China

BEIJING — Charles River Laboratories International Inc., a U.S. medical research equipment and services company, said Friday it is canceling a $1.6 billion acquisition of WuXi PharmaTech after shareholder objections.

Charles River's announcement of the planned purchase in April came amid a rush by foreign drug companies to expand research and development operations in China.

But Charles River shareholders objected to the deal's price and strategic value.

"Given their concerns about the proposed transaction, and our commitment not to proceed without their support, we have decided that terminating the transaction is the appropriate action to take," said Charles River's chairman, James C. Foster, in a statement.

The company, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, said it would pay WuXi PharmaTech a $30 million break fee.

The deal would have given Charles River drug-testing facilities in the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Suzhou and Tianjin.

Investment firm Jana Partners LLC, which owns a little more than 7 percent of Charles River's stock, urged shareholders to reject the takeover.

Jana Partners objected to the price and pointed to what it called Charles River's "poor track record" of integrating acquisitions.

Sina Technology News on July 26 morning news, human resources service providers Zhaopin (????) staged in one day twice removed. And after this dramatic is the removal of an internal message that CTO, executive vice president of duties, and hours later another e-mail letters from the Board of Directors announced the recall inspired CEO, COO and other executives.

Last Friday afternoon, a hair to Zhaopin name of a company's e-mail circulated to all staff, announced the lifting of remaining with the CTO with Tong Luo Yihua, vice president, technical director Zhang spring all the duties, be expelled from the company, but did not give specific reasons. In addition, CFO Guo Jianmin Zhaopin announced the company for personal reasons resigned from office.

Announced four executives left off the outside world caused great concern,but more dramatic is the e-mail sent just a few hours after Zhaopin staff has received a letter from the Board of Directors authorized release message, the content is said Zhao Peng CEO, COO Lei Weiming other four other executives leave.

When the first message sent overseas, the SAN has been linked Zhaopin PR, relevant personnel to confirm the authenticity of the message. Then the said company executives and board of directors has been in a meeting, and said second message does not make a comment. But the source said a decision once the company's internal discussions, the truth will be announced the first time.

Some analysts believe that the message reflects the two main factions to CEO Zhao Peng and Tong, as well as CTO mainly use the contradiction between the factions, which may be the board of directors and investors support. This contradiction caused by a large one of the reasons is the founder of Zhaopin team have long faded, but in the case of foreign-controlled management of easy confusion.

fact this is not the first major personnel changes. Last year in August before the announcement Zhaopin CEO Liu Hao resign from his post, former COO Zhao Peng took over as the new CEO. At that time the industry’s view is that consecutive losses to investors have lost confidence.

Investment in Zhaopin was from Australia and New Zealand’s largest recruitment site SEEK and Australian investment bank Macquarie 110 million U.S. dollars of investment, while the cost of the investment and further diluted share Zhaopin, After the completion of investment now, SEEK, Macquarie and Zhaopin other shareholders structure is 4:3:3.

public information, to December 31, 2008 SEEK shares in Zhaopin close to 56.2%, meaning that SEEK has Zhaopin own initiative. According to Zhao Peng said earlier this year interviewed by the media data, Zhaopin has been achieved in the fourth quarter of profitability. (Tracy)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By HAROLD MEYERSON

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

( page 3 of 3 )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By HAROLD MEYERSON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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