Recruiting in China

The Ministry of Education has urged education departments across the country to offer better employment guidance and support to college graduates so that they can find proper jobs even in these difficult financial times.

"The grim economic situation poses an unprecedented challenge for college graduates to get a proper job. A series of new steps should be taken to broaden the job-seeking channels," the ministry said on its website yesterday.

"The education departments should hold more and larger job fairs next year to provide better communication between employers and college graduates," it said.

More than 6 million students will graduate next year and some of them have already begun seeking jobs.

Graduates who commit to work in remote and rural areas for a given period will be exempt from paying college tuition fees, the ministry said on Monday. And the government will pay off their education loans or grant them free admission to postgraduate courses.

The government will recruit over 30,000 college graduates next year to teach in rural schools in western regions.

The government adopted a plan in 2006 to send college graduates to rural schools as teachers, and will employ 100,000 graduates in villages in five years, starting from 2008.

On the Ministry of Education's suggestion, the army will absorb more college students next year, and the figure will be nearly equal to the total quota for 2006 and 2007: 16,000 and 17,000.

Other plans to help new graduates include raising the number of seats in full-time postgraduate or second-degree courses, which many Chinese college students could join to postpone their job-hunting exercise and look for better ones with a higher degree a couple of years later.

A colossal number of students graduate from China's colleges each year and their success rate in finding jobs varies.

The government is going ahead with a nationwide reform of civil servants' pay that includes raising the salaries of officials in poorer regions, despite the ongoing financial crisis, a publicity official from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said yesterday.

"At present, we do not have any plans to amend or postpone the scheduled reform," the official, who did not want to be named, told China Daily.

The salary reform is aimed at regulating the allowances and subsidies of the country's 8 million civil servants, by reducing such payments in affluent areas and boosting them in poorer regions. The changes rolled out in July 2006 and are expected to be completed next year.

Civil servants in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and in Henan, Hebei and Anhui provinces already saw their allowances raised from last month, the Sichuan-based West China Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

Henan provincial authorities received the green light from the State Council to raise the monthly salaries of their officials by 300 yuan ($44) each in mid-November, the newspaper reported.

The move was part of the national reform to regulate civil servants' pay and had nothing to do with the current financial crisis affecting economies worldwide, a Henan official said.

"We made the adjustment because our civil servants have complained about their low income for a long time," said the official, who wanted to be known by his surname Wu, with the finance department of the Henan provincial government.

"The changes have nothing to do with the financial crisis. We submitted the requisite applications last year," Wu said.

Still, other researchers said it was not the right time to continue with the salary reform.

"The timing is not good, as the global economy is in a recession and China is facing mounting economic pressure," Su Hainan, head of the Institute for Labor and Wage Studies, was quoted by The Economic Observer as saying on Sunday.

The government should step up efforts to fight corruption and lessen tax for companies instead of increasing civil servants' pay, Cao Jianhai, a researcher from the Institute of Industrial Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said yesterday.

"Increasing investment on rural education as well as rural infrastructure and agriculture are also among the government's imminent tasks," Cao said.

BEIJING, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese capital of Beijing tops a nationwide city innovation list, according to a report released by the China City Development Research Institute on Sunday.

Shanghai, the business and financial center, and Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, ranked second and third on the list, ahead of Guangzhou, Tianjin and Chongqing.

Cheng Andong, the institute's executive director, said cities, which generate 70 percent of gross domestic product and are home to over 90 percent universities and research agencies, play a key role in building China into an innovative country.

The cities should develop more advanced technologies to help transform the growth mode and structures of the national economy, Cheng told a forum in Beijing.

Officials and scholars at the forum also called to introduce more innovative government management patterns and build more responsible and low-lost governments.

The 775,000 candidates knew only 175 out of every 10,000 would get the chance to work in central government departments but that did not stop them from taking the national civil services exam Sunday.

Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security figures show 21 percent more candidates wrote the exam this year. The candidates, most of them graduating students, are fighting for 13,566 "gold rice bowls", or central government department posts.

A candidate shows her admit card for national civil service exam in Hefei, Anhui province November 30, 2008. About 775,000 people are competing for 13,566 government jobs this years. [Xinhua]

China Disabled Person's Federation jobs have attracted the highest number of candidates for a post: 4,723.

Candidates who pass the exam will be called for interviews and have to take a professional test before March 15, 2009. The successful ones can expect to get an offer before June, the ministry said.

"A civil service job is ideal for me. Although my current job might pay better, I want stability, more leisure time and more personal space. And all those can be got only as a civil servant," said Qian Qi, 22, who now works as an assistant in a foreign-funded company in Jiangsu province.

Yang Shiqiu, vice-minister of human resources and social security, said earlier that more candidates are competing for civil service jobs this year because of growing unemployment and the advantages such posts offer during these difficult times.

Cong Cong, a postgraduate student of Nanjing University, said: "I didn't think of beating so many candidates for a job when I applied for a position offered in the Ministry of Education. But I have to because I've submitted my resume to about 60 firms and got only 10 replies, and no offers."
November and December are the best time for candidates to get a high-end job, and half the students from Cong's department should have got offers by now. But this year, only two or three of them have been able to find a job. "Big or small, the civil services exam gives us hope," she said.

Almost 65 percent of the 5,000 people polled online recently said they would take the exam next year again if they fail this year. The survey also showed almost half of them had already written the exam once before.

"I would definitely try again if I don't get through this time," Qian said. "I'll keep on trying even if the success ratio is 1:100 or 1:1,000." Qian passed the written exam last year but could not get past the first round of interview for a job in the Ministry of Commerce.

Even if candidates fail to clear the national civil services exam, they still have the chance of passing the provincial service tests.

Sun Han, a student of Zhejiang University's law department, said: "I know the chance is slim but I will still try. I have prepared for the test for six months, and in case I fail in the national level test, I still have a chance to take a test in my hometown in Hangzhou in January for a job."

The provincial civil service test is much like the national exam but offers posts in local government departments.

The severe competition this year has made authorities tighten supervision, too. Radio management departments and police have taken steps to prevent candidates from cheating by using mobile phones or radio sets. A person found cheating will be banned from taking exams for five years.

BEIJING, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The Beijing city government has offered a subsidy to firms willing to give a job to laid-off workers, Chinese media said on Sunday, in the latest instance of local governments trying to combat rising risks of unemployment.

Companies willing to employ the unemployed could get up to 10,000 yuan a year per worker for the next three to five years, according to a report by the China News Service, citing the capital's labour bureau.

Faced with the prospect of declining orders for the export sector, China's central government has announced a 4 trillion yuan stimulus package which has been matched by 10 trillion yuan in projects announced by several provinces.

Local governments, which must fight to preserve jobs or run the risk of potentially destabilizing unemployed workers, have announced a series of ad hoc policies.

Hubei Province, in central China, earlier this month ordered state-owned companies to reduce salaries before cutting staff, the Xinhua news agency reported on Nov. 18. Large and medium-sized state-owned companies would need to seek government approval for lay-offs involving at least 50 people, it said.

In southern China, workers at some shuttered factories have had their unpaid back wages guaranteed by local governments, often in direct response to protests.

The export hub of Dongguan, in Southern China, in October set up a 1 billion yuan rescue fund for small and medium-sized businesses hurt by the global crisis.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers PWC.UL plans to hire about 2,000 graduates in China in 2009, part of its long-term plan to expand in the country despite the global credit crunch, its top China head said on Monday.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the world's "Big Four" auditing firms, also plans to retain this pace of hiring for the next three to five years and will open new offices in the vast country "very soon" to support its rapid business growth, said Frank Lyn, Beijing-based China Markets Leader of PwC.

Lyn also noted that Chinese companies with ambitions to expand in the West through mergers and acquisitions could wait another six to nine months when deals are expected to be cheaper.

"The current economic crisis is something that everyone is very, very concerned about," Lyn told Reuters in an interview in Shanghai, China's financial hub.

"But if you take a longer-term view and the fact that we're here to stay, we are not just hiring for now but ready to train our people for the next five to 10 years," he said.

On average, it takes three to five years to groom a graduate to the level of a senior associate in PwC, Lyn added.

Last year, PwC hired 1,800 graduates and 800 experienced executives in China, Lyn said, adding it would be difficult to forecast how many experienced staff would be hired next year because the market environment will be different.

PwC has around 11,000 employees in China, Hong Kong and Macau where the firm operates a total of 13 offices.

Globally, PwC runs offices in 153 countries with more than 155,000 staff.

In China, PwC's major rivals include Ernst & Young ERNY.UL, Deloitte & Touche DLTE.UL and KPMG KPMG.UL, while it is also facing growing challenges from smaller local firms as China's Ministry of Finance is keen to strengthen the country's own accounting industry.

LET VALUATIONS SETTLE

PwC became the official auditor for the listing of Bank of China (601988.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (3988.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in 2006, China's top foreign exchange lender, which marked one of the world's biggest initial public offering of shares that year.

Besides Bank of China, many Chinese clients of PwC are big state-owned enterprises such as PetroChina Co Ltd (601857.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and China United Telecommunications Co Ltd (600050.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Big Asian firms, especially from China and Japan, are widely expected by Wall Street to make investments in the near future in the United States, where companies such as General Electric Co (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) or 3Com (COMS.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) are keen to lure foreign capital to support growth amid the credit crunch.

Chinese companies "should not stop doing so but should really pause and let the valuations settle," said Lyn, referring to firms with ambition to expand abroad.

"We still believe we have to go out there and do the outbound investment for a variety of reasons -- buying technology, expertise, market share and so on," he said.

"You'll see in six to nine months, the activities will pick up and that's my personal view purely from the value perspective," he added.