Recruiting in China

Shanghai's trade volume hit a record in December, which helped the city post better growth in annual trade than the national figure, Shanghai Customs data showed.

Imports through Shanghai were a record 186.81 billion yuan ($27.3 billion) in December, lifting the monthly trade value over 300 billion yuan for the first time to 306.03 billion yuan, customs said.

For 2016, the city's imports and exports totaled 2.87 trillion yuan, up 2.7 percent from a year ago. The rise reversed a 2.1 percent decline in 2015.

The city's imports rose 5.2 percent to 1.66 trillion yuan last year, faster than the national gain of 0.6 percent.

Exports dipped 0.5 percent to 1.21 trillion yuan, but the drop was smaller than the national decline of 1.5 percent.

Trade with the US, Europe and Japan rose 2.3 percent to 1.4 trillion yuan last year, accounting for 47.7 percent of the city's total foreign trade.

The city's trade with the 22 markets having free trade agreements with China rose 5.4 percent to 1.1 trillion yuan.

Shanghai's exports of integrated circuits rose 8.5 percent, medical devices gained 3.8 percent, and solar battery grew 1.5 percent, customs said.

Foreign trade through the free trade zone rose 5.9 percent to 783.68 billion yuan last year, accounting for 27.3 percent of the city's total trade volume.

Taiwan's average unemployment rate in 2016 stood at 3.92 percent, up 0.14 percentage points from 2015, the island's statistics authority revealed Monday.

On average, 460,000 people were out of work in 2016, increasing 20,000 from the previous year, with about 70,000 unemployed for a long period of time, the authority said. The total workforce in Taiwan reached 11.72 million last year.

The highest unemployment rate was observed among those who had a junior college education or higher at 4.23 percent in 2016. In terms of age, the unemployment rate among young people ages 15 to 24 reached as high as 12.12 percent, it said.

In December, the unemployment rate was 3.79 percent, both down 0.08 percentage points compared with November and the same period in 2015.

The registered unemployment rate in Chinese cities stood at 4.02 percent at the end of 2016, down from 4.04 percent three months earlier.

China created 13.14 million new jobs for urban residents last year, exceeding the official target, Lu Aihong, an official with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, told a press conference on Monday.

The government has pledged to keep the whole-year registered unemployment rate below 4.5 percent and create at least 10 million jobs in 2016.

Baidu has hired former Microsoft executive and artificial intelligence expert Lu Qi as president and chief operating officer to help the Chinese search engine tap emerging technologies.

The heads of Baidu's technology, financial services and search units will all report to Lu as Baidu aims for a strong management team to drive the next phase of growth, the company said yesterday.

"To achieve our goals, especially in artificial intelligence, which is a key strategic focus for the next decade, we will need to continue attracting the best global talent," Baidu Chairman and founder Robin Li said in a statement.

Lu's appointment, with immediate effect, came a day after Baidu opened an augmented reality lab and followed an announcement in September of a US$200 million venture fund for emerging technologies.

German automaker Volkswagen plans to provide more than 400,000 new energy cars for the Chinese market by 2020, according to Professor Jochem Heizmann, CEO of Volkswagen Group China, Monday.

According to the plan, the number will increase to 1.5 million by 2025.

The company announced earlier that it would introduce 15 models of new energy vehicles in China in the next three or four years, to address the environmental protection needs of the Chinese market, as well as 10 models worldwide in the next decade.

New energy vehicles sales of the company are expected to reach 2 million to 3 million in 2025, 20 to 25 percent of its total sales.

China is Volkswagen's largest market. Volkswagen Group China and its two joint ventures delivered 3.98 million automobiles to the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong in 2016, up 12.2 percent year on year.

With this year's "Chunyun," the name given for the travel rush around Spring Festival, starting from Jan 13, some parcel deliverymen have returned to their hometowns to celebrate China's most important family holiday.

Courier companies, including SF Express, YTO Express and TTK Express, though have claimed that delivery and pickup will be normal during the Spring Festival holiday in response to the "No rest for the whole year" policy of the State Post Bureau.

However, due to the shortage of employees, some service stations will stop parcel pickup.

A deliveryman of YTO Express Beijing said that from Jan 15 parcels sent to other provinces will not be picked up, while Jan 20 is the deadline for parcels dispatched to be collected in the same city.

An employee of TTK Express said that parcel pickup will stop one week before the Spring Festival, china.org.cn reported.

Spring Festival, which falls on Jan 28 this year, is China's most important family holiday, with hundreds of millions heading for their hometowns to reunite with relatives and friends. It is expected to leave online shopping sites short-handed due to the exodus of workers.

Domestic express delivery services are getting a business boost from the explosive growth of e-commerce.

China's burgeoning courier service sector is predicted to generate 500 billion yuan ($72 billion) in business revenue this year, said Ma Junsheng, head of State Post Bureau. More than 40 billion express parcels will be sent in 2017, he added.