Recruiting in China

By Perri Capell

Question: I'm a 50-plus marketing and training consultant, who will be going to China as a "trailing spouse" for six months this fall. While there, I need to work or acquire skills or knowledge that I can use on return. How I can I take advantage of this experience?

Answer: China is now a top expatriate destination, and 90% of companies surveyed globally expect to send as many or more expats there as they have recently, according to relocation-services company Cendant Mobility, a unit of Cendant Corp. of New York. That means that more professional spouses, such as you, may be seeking work.

This situation can be tough. World-wide, only 21% of trailing spouses and partners worked during a foreign assignment, even though 60% of them were employed before it, according to a survey conducted in 2004 by GMAC Global Relocation Services (GRS) of Woodridge, Ill.

The key to making the most of your stay is to get busy now. Start by taking Chinese language classes and cross-cultural training. Find out if your husband's employer offers training. Ask friends and networking acquaintances to recommend books about China or international aspects of your field, and research the Internet about your destination city, which you said separately is Nanjing.

"Develop a mini-curriculum similar to an independent-study program," says Lisa Johnson, director of consulting services for Cendant.

Gill Aldred, director of strategic services in London for GMAC GRS, believes your stay is too short for you to expect to secure full-time work. However, American corporate skills are scarce in China, and many Chinese employees accustomed to central controls lack U.S.-style initiative, says Ms. Aldred. Helping to train local employees in U.S. work styles may be an option for you, she says.

To find clients, tell all your current and past clients about your plans. Find out if any have subsidiaries in Nanjing and if you can provide training to their employees. Also use your network to gain referrals to managers of Nanjing-based companies. They may want to know how to market their products to the U.S.

If neither are possible, offer to research for U.S. companies how products and services are sold in China and how they might tap this market. "Let them know you're going, and ask what initiatives they have in place," says Ms. Johnson. "Ask if you can be a resource on the ground, doing research, training, or working with local trainers there."

You likely will need a special visa or license to work in China, says Stephen Hincks, China manager in Shanghai for Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP, a corporate immigration law firm based in New York. There are visa and work permit issues you need to research.

If you learn from the China Immigration Department and Labor Bureau that an "F" visa isn't right for you, you can enter China on a different type of visa and then file for a work permit and residence license, Mr. Hincks says.

If you can't find work, make the six months an information-gathering mission by learning as much as you can personally and professionally, says Beverly L. W. Sunn, president of Asia Pacific Properties, a corporate real-estate and relocation-services company based in Hong Kong. "Probably, the most realistic expectation is to return home ready to articulate new knowledge about the country," says Ms. Johnson.

Local expatriates have a lot to offer. Local expatriates have a lot to offer. Consider joining groups such as the American Chamber of Commerce and the American Women's Club. You also can network by joining local professional groups, such as Chinese marketing or training societies. Offer to speak about corporate marketing and training at one of these groups or perhaps to business students at local universities.

Find ways to interview corporate marketers or trainers in Nanjing or observe them at work. "Look for companies that provide training for local Chinese trying to move ahead in an international career, since they will mostly offer training in English," says Ms. Johnson.

Also consider teaching English or volunteering in hospitals or orphanages or for another cause. Take language, cooking, art or Chinese culture classes. Participate in activities that are part of the general culture, such as morning exercise sessions in a park, Ms. Sunn suggests.

Travel to China without preconceived notions, and be ready to change course if you find doors closed to you. Keep track of what you learn by writing a daily journal or letters to friends. Finally, don't let professional demands keep you from sightseeing and enjoying this adventure with your spouse.

Young expats looking for adventure and opportunity are being drawn to China, where the economy is booming, rents are cheap and skills in short supply.

By Ralph Jennings

May 4, 2006 - Jeremy Goldkorn spent six years hanging out in Beijing, drifting from job to job. He taught English for a while. He rode his bike through Tibet. For a year he worked at Beijing Scene, an entertainment magazine, until it was shut down a year later. He bounced between Beijing and Silicon Valley for a high-tech company, until it went belly up. By 2001, he had resettled in Beijing to start a bilingual entertainment magazine, which became Time Out, but quit after nearly a year “mostly because I wanted to do my own thing,” says Goldkorn, a 34 year-old South African. In 2002, Goldkorn helped start Standards Group, a Beijing advertising, Web-site and corporate video agency that now boasts lucrative blue-chip clients. “China is a superb place if you want to get your teeth into different types of creative work,” he says.

Goldkorn is not the only Western drifter to make good in Beijing. China seems to be awash in expats who seem content to drift from one job to another before landing something that catches their fancy. They are taking advantage of burgeoning demand for local-hire China hands with Mandarin-language skills in entertainment, media, finance, trading and other fields. At the same time, Western firms are looking to scale back on their longstanding practice of sending highly compensated expats to China with housing allowances and hardship pay. Instead, they’re turning to a labor pool of Westerners—estimated at 300,000—who have decided to settle in China, at least while the economy continues to grow and rents (one-bedroom apartments in Beijing start at $300 a month) stay cheap. “You’re in a market that’s growing at 10 percent a year, so there’s a market here for whatever you want to do,” says Kaiser Kuo, a musician and local magazine satirist who came here 10 years ago from the United States.

Until the late 1990s, China didn’t let foreigners stay long-term for much more than diplomacy, university study, or pre-arranged jobs with well-established foreign organizations. In the past five years, however, Beijing has relaxed visa restrictions in order to attract foreign investment and foreign staff for Chinese companies, from airlines to English-language newspapers. China’s liberalization of its so-called F visas—ostensibly for come-and-go foreign investors and company executives—has allowed more people to stay in China without formal jobs. Despite occasional rumblings of a crackdown on F-visa abuse, visa agents in Beijing say they can process the paperwork for six-month or one-year stays. Over the past five years, many cities have also scrapped rules requiring foreigners to live in designated high-end apartment complexes. As a result, the number of foreigners in China has increased fivefold, according to visa consultants and Chinese press reports. The biggest single group of expats are about 110,000 Americans, half of whom live in the two prime job centers of Beijing and Shanghai; the rest are scattered across the mainland.

Expats who speak Mandarin and offer specific technical skills are most likely to find work, according to Jim Leininger, general manager in the Beijing office of the human-resources consultancy Watson Wyatt Worldwide. They may land high-level finance jobs, which lack qualified Chinese applicants, or jobs in areas such as media and advertising that emphasize creativity and innovation, because the Chinese educational system has been “traditionally weak in these areas,” he says. Half the foreign companies in China plan to add expatriate staff, particularly specialists and middle managers, according to a study last year by Hewitt Associates, a British human-resources consulting firm. The maxim of many of these companies is “talent first, package later,” says the Hewitt report.

That's good news to people like Seattle native Perri Dong, 40, who was having trouble finding a job after the dot-com bust had put a damper on hiring in San Francisco. His wife had done some work in China, so in 2001 they made the move to Beijing. Because his wife held a stable job, Dong could afford to “put in a little bit of investment” in building connections. He wrote a cooking column for a monthly magazine and cofounded a wine and cheese tasting club in Beijing. Then in December, he got his break: the American-owned importer ASC Fine Wines hired Dong as North America brand manager in its Shanghai office. “In the end everything came together,” he says, “I got a job that pays pretty well, and it’s in an industry that’s consistent with what I know. All the stars seem to be in alignment right now,” says Dong.

Xuer Khawa Dang, 33, had good luck as well. A U.S. citizen, she moved to Beijing in 2003 because China had grabbed her attention when she joined a women’s talent show in Chengdu in 2001. She worked for several Chinese and joint-venture companies, then decided to run her own business to capitalize on her familiarity with both China and the United States. Dang realized that she could profit from her passion for swimming. She had been informally buying waterproof strap-on MP3 players for friends in Beijing, so last year it hit her to ask the gear maker, California swimwear company Finis Inc., for China distribution rights. She now earns a living from MP3 player sales and tutoring four children in English. “After living in Beijing for two and a half years, I have to admit that I’m very content with the current lifestyle I have,” Dang says.

First jobs often include editing for Chinese state media or a public-relations firm, processing visa applications at an embassy or doing freelance work for local magazines. Garage musicians may get a few yuan for mentoring a Chinese rock band. Other expats live in bars and out of backpacks on noncareer incomes plus savings from home. Most study Chinese in their down time. The classic starter job is teaching English, sometimes at top universities (for some 4,000 yuan per month, or about $500) but often on hourly wages at private schools that want white faces more than educators. Brian Gottlieb, 29, who moved to China in 2001 because he’d been inspired by a Chinese couple who stayed with his family in Washington, D.C., picked up whatever jobs he could find on the side, writing for local publications or copy-editing English-language documents for Chinese enterprises. After working for several traditionally autocratic Chinese companies, he took an internship with the American consultancy APCO, which led to a full-time job.

Western companies favor long-term expatriates over local Chinese for jobs that call for bilingual skills skewed toward English, cross-cultural communication ability and problem-solving instincts, said Teresa Woodland, founder of the Wudelan Partners consulting firm and a member of the board of governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in the People's Republic of China. She said local Chinese do not only always know how to talk with Western clients or have a “solution” mentality toward client queries. But Chinese hires are still cheaper. “The reason you’d want a foreigner is because they bring something different,” she said. Expat hires have increased with growth of overseas firms in China’s communication-intensive service sector, especially public relations, travel, moving and consulting, Woodland added. Ten percent of New York-based Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide’s 120 Beijing employees are expatriates. Ogilvy hires foreigners who have found their own way to China, learned Chinese and want entry-level positions largely “because they want to be here,” said Scott Kronick, president of Ogilvy Public Relations China. The company still brings people into China for special expertise—the leader of its investor-relations team was brought in from the United States—but does not automatically pay them more than local-hire expatriates, he said.

The good times for expat drifters may not last forever. Chinese citizens returning from college educations overseas now have the English fluency, technical skills and low salary requirements required to fill jobs previously held by higher-paid expatriates. As with the dot-com phenom that propelled many expats here in the first place, the boom could end with a bust. For the time being, however, China is a good place to be an expat drifter.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

10 million opportunities created ¡ª Xinhua

BOAO (Hainan): China has created some 10 million job opportunities for the world over the past five years, said Vice President Zeng Qinghong here on Saturday.

China had also been importing nearly $500 billion worth of goods annually since its entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, Mr. Zeng said. He was giving a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Meeting 2006.

Highlighting the opportunities of development China has brought to the world over the past years, he said imports from Asian countries and areas increased 20 per cent year-on-year to hit $440 billion in 2005, accounting for 67 per cent of China's total volume of imports.

Beneficial cooperation

Overseas investment by Chinese companies has increased by over 20 per cent annually, with 80 per cent of it made in Asia.

China will ``unswervingly'' pursue peaceful development and pay more attention to friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation with the world, especially with Asian countries and regions, Mr. Zeng said.

He said China's smooth and fast development would provide more opportunities for regional cooperation in Asia. He said 2006 was the first year of China's 11th Five-Year (2006-2010) plan.

In the coming five years, China would improve its mode of economic growth and focus attention on environment protection and resource-conserving to maintain a stable and relatively fast development.

By 2010, Mr. Zeng said China's GDP would exceed $3 trillion, and the annual import volume will surpass $1 trillion. The energy consumption per unit would be reduced by 20 per cent, and the emission of pollutants would be cut by 10 per cent.

Apr. 18, 2006. 07:32 AM
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEOUL ¡ª Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's top vehicle maker, said Tuesday it has begun construction on its second auto plant in China, a project involving a total investment of $1 billion (U.S.).

The Beijing plant, which will also include a new research centre, will have an annual capacity of 300,000 vehicles as Hyundai expands its presence in the world's fastest-growing auto market, the Seoul-based company said in a statement.

"Through continuing growth in China, which is an important center of our global strategy, we will establish our firm position as a global auto maker," Hyundai chairman Chung Mong-Koo said in the statement.

Once construction is completed in 2007, Beijing Hyundai Motor Co., a 50-50 joint venture with between Hyundai and Beijing Automobile Investment, will have an annual production capacity of 600,000 vehicles a year from 2008, the statement said.

Hyundai Motor already has a plant in Beijing with an annual capacity of around 300,000 vehicles.

The new plant will create about 3,200 jobs and will add five new models in China, on top of five models that are currently being produced at Hyundai's existing plant.

Beijing Hyundai Motor sold 66,814 vehicles this year through March from a 2006 sales target of 300,000 vehicles. In 2005, Beijing Hyundai sold 233,668 vehicles.

Hyundai, along with its affiliate Kia Motors Corp., aims to become the world's sixth-largest carmaker by 2010 and is aggressively expanding overseas production to meet the goal.

Last month, Hyundai announced that it will build a plant in the Czech Republic, while Kia will build a plant in the U.S. state of Georgia.

Hyundai has four overseas production bases in China, India, Turkey and the U.S.

April 25, 2006

Lloyd's has announced that Ian Faragher has been appointed Chief Operating Officer of its new Chinese onshore reinsurance operation in Shanghai, Lloyd's Reinsurance Company (China) Ltd., effective May 15.

"Ian has over 25 years insurance experience and has worked for a number of years in China, Hong Kong and Thailand. He was previously responsible for the Liberty Mutual and Chubb operations in China," said the bulletin.

Director of Worldwide Markets, Julian James welcomed the appointment, commenting: "Ian brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge of the Asian insurance market which will be crucial as we continue our work with the Chinese authorities to get the new operation up and running in the autumn. We look forward to him joining on 15th May"

Paul Swain, Chairman of Lloyd's China Strategic Steering Group noted: "I am delighted that Ian has agreed to join Lloyd's as our new Chief Operating Officer in China. In Ian we have a strong leader with first-hand knowledge of China and experience of establishing and running operations there."

Sony Ericsson plans to increase the staff at its China R&D center to 350 by 2008, Shanghai Youth Daily reports. The company's China R&D center was founded in 2004. On April 10 Sony Ericsson released the Z530c handset, the company's first handset model to be designed and produced entirely in China.