Recruiting in China

A latest evaluation report on social development released by State Statistics Bureau reveals that Shanghai and Beijing take the lead in national living standard in China.

The comprehensive social development index is made by State Statistics Bureau. Twenty-three items that reflect social developments are divided into four parts: population, living condition, social welfare and commonweal service. The average value that reported by local governments is calculated with 1 as the base, which can be used as comparison for social developments in different regions.

Places that have high social development scores are Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian and Liaoning.

According to the "2006 Shanghai Finance Stability Report" issued by the central bank, in 2005 some 3.763 billion US dollars of foreign capital flowed into the property market in Shanghai, increasing by 40% over 2004. Among the four major types of foreign capital flows, a large proportion went to the group of people who were not Shanghai local residents and spent their money directly buying real estate.

Although Chinese government had issued a regulation on limiting foreign capital's access to domestic property market, foreign capital still kept flowing into the Shanghai property market. Many foreign-fund management companies are enthusiastic about using their money to buy office buildings or luxury apartments in Shanghai.

On July 24, a month after the central government published related regulation on limiting foreign capital¡¯s activities in China, the Hopson Group announced that it had sold all the shares of the Hopson International Mall to the Pacific Delta Investments limited at a total price of 300 million US dollars. The Hopson International Mall is located in the finance and trade area in Lujiazui. Two months later, the Genting Berhad Group in Malaysia announced that they had controlled the Changshou Commerical Plaza in Shanghai by the acquisition of the Rich Field Group at a price of 572.7 million Hong Kong dollars.

"The short-term changes in the investment market will cause investors to make some adjustment. However, for the long-term investors are still optimistic about the property market in Shanghai," said Zhang Zhenpin£¬ president of the Colliers International Group.

His words showed that the regulation might affect their investment activities for a short period. However, it won¡¯t change their long-term investment prospect.

Chinanews, Beijing, Oct. 17 - Yi Gang, Assistant Governor of the People's Bank of China (PBC), said recently that with one year¡¯s operation, that China's floating exchange rate regime, which is based on market demand, has been proved successful. In 2006, China's export competitiveness is still very strong. China's GDP and consumption are still increasing.

He made the remarks when delivering a speech at the School of Economic Management in Beijing University of Technology. In his speech, Yi says that overall, the Renminbi exchange rate regime will remain stable at a reasonable, balanced level, and its value will rise slowly in response to the Renminbi appreciation pressure.

Since July 2005, the Renminbi value has raised by 4.7% in total. Some people once worried that Renminbi appreciation would affect China's export competitiveness. However, the real situation has proved that such worries are unnecessary, since the trade surplus for the first nine months of this year has exceeded the total trade surplus for the whole of last year. This shows that China's export competitiveness is still very strong, Yi claims.

Chinanews, Beijing, October 17 ¨C The most advanced 6-inch IC production line has started operation in Shenzhen, in the factory of Founder Micro Electronics.

The four centers of IC industry in China are the Yangtze River Delta, with the most complete industrial chain; the region near the Bohai Sea, with advantage of research and development; the Zhujiang River Delta, the biggest IC producer in the country, where most of China¡¯s information products are exported; the area including Sichuan and Shaanxi, which is rich in natural resources.

Being the most potential IC market in the world, China will very probably rank No.2 before 2010, even to rival the USA with many famous brands and competitive enterprises.

SHANGHAI, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- A female entrepreneur has topped a list of China's richest people, the first time a woman has headed the list in the country.

Zhang Yin, 49-year-old founder and chairwoman of Guangdong-based Nine Dragons Paper Industries Co., Ltd., has amassed a fortune of 27 billion yuan (3.375 billion U.S. dollars).

"She is the wealthiest self-made woman in the world," said Rupert Hoogewerf who set up the list known as the Huran Report in 1999. According to Hoogewerf, Zhang is richer than the U.S. television host Oprah Winfrey and author of the Harry Potter series JK Rowling.

Zhang Yin was born to a soldier's family in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province as the eldest sister of seven. She went to Hong Kong in 1985 and started her career in waste paper trading with 30,000 yuan.

Zhang defied financial hardship, cheating business partners and intimidation from local mafia to build up her wealth in the subsequent five years before moving to the United States with her husband in February 1990 to pursue her dream of becoming an "empress of waste paper".

In 1996 she set up the Nine Dragons Paper Industries Co., Ltd. in Dongguan of Guangdong. Her product is now used by multinational companies, such as Coca Cola, Nike, Sony, Haier and TCL.

Zhang deems luck as the most important factor in her success, adding that her down-to-earth personality has helped her career.

Falling to second place is Huang Guangyu of China's household electronics giant GOME Electrical Appliances with a fortune of 20 billion yuan (2.5 billion U.S. dollars) after occupying the top spot for the last two years.

Huang started his career on a roadside stall in Beijing selling radios and gadgets. GOME now has 560 branches in over 160 cities on the Chinese mainland and 12 in Hong Kong and Macao.

Ranked in third place is Zhu Mengyi, 47-years-old and CEO of the Hopson Development Holding Limited, with 16.5 billion yuan (2.06 billion U.S. dollars). After graduating from a middle school, he built up his fortune from being a foreman in a township in Guangdong.

Of the 500 people on the list, 35 are female, seven percent of the total. The new list suggests that women are showing increasing talent in business, Hoogewerf said.

Six people in the top ten are involved in real estate and four are from southeast China's Guangdong Province.

People are getting rich quickly, noted Hoogewerf, who added that last year, the person ranked No. 400 had 500 million yuan (62.5 million U.S. dollars), while this year, the 400th person had800 million yuan (100 million U.S. dollars). Enditem

SHANGHAI: Minutes after the news he had quit as chief financial officer of KongZhong Corp, J.P. Gan took a call from a headhunter.

On offer was a top spot at a venture capital-backed Chinese company with plans for an overseas initial public offering.

Chief financial officers and top level executives are in high demand across the globe as cash-rich investment companies put their money to work buying companies, changing management teams, and growing the businesses.

In China, the effect is amplified. Young, western savvy CFOs who have language skills, regulatory knowledge and international experience are highly sought after and hard to find. “Talent is limited, in general. That's just the way things are in China,” said Jixun Foo, a Shanghai-based managing director of venture capital company Granite Global Ventures.

Aggravating the shortage is the flow of Western educated executives out of the corporate and investment banking sectors and into private equity firms and hedge funds.

While talented chief executives are in demand in China, many investors view equally talented CFOs as more significant and harder to find, given the increased accounting demands required by global securities markets.

Chinese companies need CFOs who can put in place or modernise their financial infrastructure to satisfy investors and regulators.

Gan is leaving KongZhong, a US$250mil Chinese wireless services company, for venture capital firm Qiming Venture Partners in Shanghai. He said he knew at least 10 venture-backed companies hunting for CFOs.

One key executive requirement is solid English skills.

A CFO of a foreign-listed or Hong Kong-listed Chinese company can expect to earn anywhere from US$150,000 to US$500,000, plus options, said several people interviewed for this article, with CEO's earning slightly more.

Also fuelling CFO demand is a string of successful new China listings, which have sparked a rush to the initial public offerings market. – Reuters