Recruiting in China

In July, reports surfaced that China's two mobile telecoms giants had hit upon a novel marketing strategy. In the east China city of Suqian, China Mobile and China Unicom were giving away cases of local beer to new subscribers.

An analyst quoted in the Financial Times noted that, although a duopoly, the two companies were competing to lure subscribers as though there were "10 competitors fighting it out."

As effective as beer-driven marketing may be during a sweltering summer, if this is what passes for innovation in mobile telecommunications then the nearly 500 million Chinese mobile phone users might want to reach for something stronger.

The problem is that while China's two mobile phone operators might market with a competitive verve, they behave like the government-managed duopoly they are when it comes to technical innovation.

Wireless value-added services (WVAS) are largely limited to the standard 2G diet of ring tones, ring back tones and text-based gimmicks. Many of these come from small, third-party providers over which the operators maintain rigid control. This has generated more controversy than innovation as WVAS providers have struggled with shady customer recruiting practices, the duopoly's financial demands and wide-ranging content restrictions. Revenues are declining across the board and many WVAS providers are teetering on the brink of failure, let alone dreaming up exciting new products.

As a result, the largest mobile telephone market in the world is a technological desert overshadowed by far more fertile territories in Korea and Japan.

A MISGUIDED STRATEGY
Don't be misled. China's telecommunications regulators are committed to domestic innovation. Unfortunately, they have chosen to focus on the development of a domestic 3G standard, TD-SCDMA, rather than using a foreign equivalent.

This is exactly the wrong the approach.

The lesson of the internet's success is that the underlying network is just the starting line. The great explosion in innovation and wealth creation has been in the services and applications that run on the network. That's why Google is worth US$160 billion less than 10 years after it was founded.

What is more, TD-SCDMA is stuck in the starting gate and China's telecoms regulator refuses to issue licenses for it or any other standard until it is ready. Licensing has slipped from 2004 to "early 2006" to "late 2006 or early 2007" to "before the Olympics" to "we'll get back to you."

For Chinese users, this means continued reliance on creaky "2.5G" data networks and the same moldy basket of uninspiring services.

What's heartbreaking is that in the years China has dawdled over TD-SCDMA, all the ingredients that would have enabled it to be a global leader in mobile applications have come together.

Global 3G standards and technologies have improved and are beginning to live up to early expectations. Handset technology has also matured to the point where real web browsing, IP telephony and even Chinese handwriting input are practical. Motorola's Ming and the turbo-hyped Apple iPhone, a sleek mobile PC cunningly disguised as a phone, are signposts to the future.

ENGINE FOR GROWTH
With the largest mobile user base in the world, China is in a perfect position to be the mobile application laboratory for Asia, if not the world.

While many of China's mobile phone users are low-revenue customers content with basic services, there is an increasingly affluent, mobile and internet-addicted youth generation already pushing the current services to the limit. Mobile internet access could have a much broader impact in China than PC-based access has ever had.

China could exploit this potential by swallowing its pride, accepting a proven global 3G standard and ordering mobile operators to open their networks and support third-party IP-based services. That could spur real innovation and make this the golden age of mobile services in China.

But as long as the state-owned enterprise mentality and top-down technical policy making prevail, that golden age will remain elusive. Instead of being the innovation leader it should be, China will remain the world's largest mobile telephony backwater and 500 million mobile phone users will be left treading water.

THE number of job vacancies and job seekers in Shanghai's second quarter have risen about 20 percent compared to the first quarter this year, according to a job market report issued yesterday.

The report, released by the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau, said 20,000 enterprises registered with the Shanghai Job Placement Center's Website (jobs.12333sh.gov.cn) and other job Websites, offering a total of 390,000 vacancies, a 20.7-percent rise from the first quarter.

A record of 419,000 people applied for jobs at public job placement centers across the city, rising by 23.2 percent from the first quarter, with most job seekers being 25 to 34 years old.

The report said the average age of the job seekers was 32, and 80 percent were under 35, while only 10 percent of the total were older than 45. The number of applicants over 45 decreased by 8.3 percent from the first quarter and 22.5 percent from the same period last year.

The city's key sectors, such as medicine manufacturing, chemical and logistic industries, attracted the most job seekers, with the employment demand-to-supply ratio at about 0.3.

According to the report, a total of 1,009 people applied for 273 medicine manufacturing jobs, putting the demand-to-supply ratio at 0.27, the lowest in the top 10 industries.

The center's career information analyst said the strong competition was due to job seekers following growing industries.

But some occupations are suffering a shortage of qualified staff.

Only 35,402 applications were received for 48,467 sales positions posted during the second quarter.

Jobs in securities investment companies also faced a shortage of staff with the bullish stock market generating a huge demand.

Only 1,189 of the 6,578 jobs in securities firms were filled, giving a demand-to-supply ratio of 5.53.

RESUMES for job applications are believed to be the biggest source of Internet privacy invasions.

A survey of 300 people by 1010job.com, a city-based online human resources agent, revealed that 75 percent of the respondents complained that personal information from their resumes had landed in the hands of unauthorized companies.

Insurance companies lead the list of the most unwanted recipients of this information, followed by real estate agents and investment companies.

But the majority of the respondents (most of whom live in Shanghai) agreed that they did not mind if employment agencies or head hunters obtained the information.

"Insurance companies are really annoying. They keep calling my cell phone asking me to buy all sorts of insurance," said Jiang Wenwen, a graduating college student.

As a student, Jiang said that she had tried to restrict the amount of information she provided on the Web, except for the resumes she sent to employment agencies.

"My resume is probably the only way companies can get information about me," she said.

Jiang is not alone. More than half the respondents believed that online resumes were the source of the leaked information, although a quarter said that hard-copy resumes handed out at job fairs were also a likely source.

A few suggested that employment agencies themselves sold the information to companies.

In 2005, Xinhua News Agency discovered insurance companies buying university graduates' resumes at job fairs for one yuan (13 US cents) each.

Last year, law makers began drafting laws to protect personal information, including the possibility that employers who carelessly discard resumes might face legal action.

While most of the surveyed applicants wanted some protection of their privacy on the Internet, two-thirds agreed that it would be difficult to prevent personal information being leaked because of the demand for employment.

SHANGHAI has created 443,000 new jobs by the end of June this year, fulfilling 88.6 percent of the city's yearly target of 500,000 positions.

More than 20,000 people so far have found jobs through a Full Employment Community program in 23 neighborhoods in Pudong New Area this year, the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau announced yesterday.

The program, the first of its kind in Shanghai, grants that at least one person in each household is employed. Meanwhile, those between the ages of 40 and 50, who usually find it hard to get jobs, have been offered training programs, job opportunities as well as applications for insurance and subsidies, Jiefang Daily reported today.

The bureau launched a work loan policy in April to encourage self employment, a way to relieve unemployment pressure.

The bureau said it would offer loan guarantees of up to 500,000 yuan (US$66,050) to people starting their own businesses. The loan would be interest-free if paid back in time, the report said.

In the city's suburbs, more than 5,000 newly-established labor organizations have created 15,000 jobs in the first half of this year, the report said.

The bureau also set up an employment promotion coalition with companies. The eyeglasses and watch repairer Sanlian Group is among the participants aiming to provide more jobs and intern opportunities for unemployed youth.

More than 14,000 young people, mostly vocational graduates, have registered to take internships with these companies, an increase of 162 percent from last year. Sixty percent of these people were hired after internships, the report said.

The government said in March that it planned to keep the registered unemployment rate below 4.5 percent this year,

But the employment situation looks grim as more than 143,000 students will graduate from colleges and universities in the city this year, an 11 percent increase from last year, which should add to job market pressure.

China's prestigious Tsinghua University will recruit 134 teachers worldwide, the Beijing News reported here Sunday.

Tsinghua will recruit 49 professors or researchers and 85 associate professors and researchers, the paper quoted the sources from the University as saying.

"We will strictly verify recommendation letters, theses and other related information submitted by applicants to root out academic fraud," said an official in charge of personnel affairs of the university.

Tsinghua required the applicants from out of Tsinghua to submit at least five theses, and overseas applicants to submit at least three recommendation letters.

In March 2006, Liu Hui, a professor was removed from his post for fabricating his academic achievements and work experience.

Currently, Tsinghua encourages professors and associate professors from both in and out of Tsinghua to compete for the academic posts available each year as part of its reforms of existing teachers' employment system.

The recruitment will be terminated on October 10 and the final results will be unveiled by the end of December, university sources said.

Moody's lifts China's ratings a notch, citing strong external-payments position
By Polya Lesova, MarketWatch
Last Update: 11:35 AM ET Jul 26, 2007

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Standard & Poor's raised its outlook on China to positive from stable, citing the country's reforms in bankruptcy, property, and labor laws this year.

"These reforms should underpin a high-single-digit trend rate of growth in China and at the same time improve the productivity of investment, thereby reducing the risks of unduly large fluctuations in growth," S&P credit analyst Kim Eng Tan said in a statement Thursday.

S&P doesn't expect any material disruptions between China and the U.S., its largest trading partner, despite rising protectionist attitudes in Congress. S&P affirmed its A long-term and A-1 short-term sovereign credit ratings on China.

"The ratings on China could rise if its leadership embraces market-based policies more readily, or if the government strengthened public finances further," Tan said.

The ratings-outlook revision by S&P comes after Moody's upgraded China's long-term foreign-currency bonds to A1 from A2 Thursday. Moody's cited the exceptional strength of China's external-payments position, favorable government debt trends, and continued progress in economic reform.

"China's very strong external-payments position provides insulation from external shocks and allows the authorities time to expand and deepen structural reform," Moody's Senior Vice President Tom Byrne said in a statement.

"Official foreign-exchange reserves continue to grow and now exceed $1.3 trillion, and external obligations of the government and state-owned banks are a small fraction of that sum," Byrne said.

China's Shanghai Composite index rose 0.5% to a record finish of 4,346.46 Thursday. The Dow Jones China 88 index, a measure of 88 highly liquid stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, rose 0.6% to 374.62. See Asia Markets.