Co-working space sector set to boom
December 6th, 2017
The flagship working space of co-working company WeWork in Shanghai at a renovated hundred-year-old UK-style building.
Freelancers and small and medium-sized companies that yearn for better working environments can increasingly avail themselves of a new option, co-working spaces.
With the rise of millennials in the workforce and the government's supportive policies such as the so-called mass entrepreneurship innovation, the co-working space sector is booming, along with much of China's emerging sharing economy.
According to an annual report released by the National Development and Reform Commission, more than 5.5 million new companies were registered last year, growing 24.5 percent year-on-year.
By the end of 2016, the country had nearly 26 million registered enterprises, up 18.8 percent year-on-year. And the report noted that 41.7 percent of the entrepreneurs are young people, especially millennials.
Seeing the huge potential in innovating away from traditional working offices, Hu Jing, the former executive vice-president of Chinese property developer Greenland Holding Group Co Ltd, established his co-working startup Distrii, to offer co-working spaces, coupled with online mobile office solutions.
"As more cities in China become highly developed and business concentrated, traffic congestion, air pollution and other city diseases pop up now, and the cost of commuting also has increased. All those problems are the real pain points for cities and will also reduce people's work efficiency," said Hu, now CEO of Distrii.
Hu aims to build a community that allows employees to set up workplaces in the nearest co-working offices, instead of traveling for hours to a far-away office.
"Advances in technologies will enable us to live in the flexible, mobile, productive and convenient working environment, marking a key point to the smarter future.
"Co-workers are able to deal with company tasks online via our mobile office solutions and communicate with other company employees in the working building to expand their social circles," he said.
According to statistics on the official website, more than 450 companies have registered to use properties offered by the Shanghai-based co-working space operator.
Currently, Distrii has set up 15,000 working spaces in four cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Singapore. The company said it would unveil its flagship franchise in Singapore next April.
In September, the company announced it had raised 200 million yuan in series A financing to further expand its light-asset office network and start to tap into overseas markets in the Asia-Pacific, Southeast Asia and North America regions.
"Our co-working mode is more than simply renting working offices. We aim to connect people with the facilities via the internet, making them into part of the smart city plan," Hu added.
Once users sign up to use the co-working building, they can simply use smartphones to unlock the office door and check in automatically via the internet. And the serviced offices will offer more functions, including tele-conferencing and video-conferencing.
"Currently, we especially target small and medium-sized companies, which account for around 70 percent of the total domestic firms, aiming to help them reduce the costs on operation and IT spending."
A report released by consultancy iResearch showed that there is huge potential in China's co-working industry. According to the report, the domestic market in China reached 4.29 billion yuan ($650 million) in 2016, and the number is expected to hit 9.35 billion yuan by 2019.
Feng Chao, an analyst at internet research company Analysys, noted that co-working companies need to offer favorable prices and comfortable working environments to accumulate enough users.
"The key is to introduce more value-added services," Feng said. "It should be more than simply providing renting offices and should involve more needed services, such as training and a community network."
Chinese firms need specialist expertise
December 5th, 2017Chinese companies will continue to see rising demand for bilingual talent, experts in Internet technology and human resources in 2018 amid globalization and China's Internet Plus strategy.
People who move to new jobs can expect an average salary increment of 10 to 20 percent while those who stay in their jobs can see a 5 to 8 percent rise in China in 2018, according to a report by Robert Walters, a global recruitment consultancy.
This year is likely to see a generally steady salary increase with an average 15 to 20 percent rise, but cooling from a rally last year.
With China being the biggest e-commerce market globally with rapid development in digital payments, automation, big data and artificial intelligence under the Internet Plus strategy, employees in information technology companies who change jobs may see a 12 to 18 percent jump in salary, according to the report yesterday.
The Belt and Road initiative and the Go Globally strategy are also driving Chinese companies to pursue bilingual professionals who have experience in international companies and understanding of local markets.
"The demand for bilingual talents is expected to rise sharply by over 50 percent in several years," said Sean Li, associate director of the Shanghai branch of Robert Walters.
Financial jobs mostly likely to be replaced by AI: Deloitte
December 1st, 2017Finance employees are most likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) in the future, said a research report by Deloitte on Nov. 30, China News reported.
The research investigated nearly 500 managerial staffs in different fields in China, of which more than 80 percent said that AI is most likely to be applied to financial work, and over three quarters said that AI could be used to provide assistance for their management work in five years.
According to the report, most of the respondents think jobs requiring carefulness and preciseness are more likely to use AI than those requiring professional knowledge, logical analysis, and communication and coordination skills.
Enterprises, therefore, should make full use of innovative technologies and tools such as big data and cognitive computing to get ready for both the opportunities and challenges to be brought by AI, said Xie An, a business partner of Deloitte.
Xie added that China's education sector should also make appropriate adjustments to cultivate talents for the coming era of AI.
Industrial internet to boost smart manufacturing
November 30th, 2017China's push to develop industrial internet will inject a fresh impetus to the development of smart manufacturing as well as the integration of the industry and the internet, analysts said on Wednesday.
"Accelerated steps on industrial internet are of significance to China's advanced manufacturing amid fierce competition from abroad. It will help promote deeper integration of the country's real economy with internet, big data and artificial intelligence," said Yang Chunli, a researcher at the China Center for Information Industry Development, a Beijing-based think tank.
The State Council, China's cabinet, earlier this week unveiled a guideline that aims to build three to five industrial internet platforms, which will reach international standards by 2025 and lead the world in key areas by 2035.
Specifically, the country will build about 10 cross-industry platforms by 2020 to accelerate digital transformations at enterprises. The industrial internet refers to a network of combined, advanced machines with internet-connected sensors and big-data analytics. It is designed to boost the productivity, efficiency and reliability of industrial production.
Qianzhan Industry Research Institute forecast that the market size of China's industrial internet sector will hit 10.8 trillion yuan ($1.64 trillion) in 2025, without disclosing the figure for this year.
"To compete with the world in internet and manufacturing, China must foster national platforms, which will act as main pillars of future industrial transformation. Key industries such as automobiles, digital, energy and aerospace are some of the potential areas to establish such national platforms," Yang said.
According to a recent report from Alliance of Industrial Internet, China's industrial internet sector is still in its infancy, as a group of Chinese companies, including Sany Heavy Industry Co Ltd, started tapping into the sector several years ago.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also selected 206 smart manufacturing pilot projects, of which 28 are related to industrial internet innovation.
Now, around 50 percent of the world's industrial platforms are provided by US enterprises and China still faces a gap with developed countries in terms of function, degree of commercialization and integrity of the whole ecosystem, according to the report.
Yang also noted that a group of companies including Rootcloud and Haier Group did quite well in industrial internet but most of them focus on certain vertical areas with limited users and resources, which still lag behind world-leading platforms such as General Electric's Predix and Siemens' MindSphere.
"However, most industrial platforms across the world are in the early stage of commercialization and are still on the way of exploring the market. In other words, China stands almost at the same starting line with developed countries," Yang said.
"Even though some enterprises started to map out industrial internet long before, they just launched their products and the service system still needs to be improved," she added.
Coca-Cola opens biggest bottling plant in N. China
November 29th, 2017Coca-Cola's biggest bottling plant in north China began operating Thursday in Xianghe County of Hebei Province, southeast of Beijing.
The plant will produce bottled water, Coke and Sprite, mainly to serve Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and neighboring regions, according to Luan Xiuju, president of COFCO Coca-Cola Beverages, a joint venture of Coca-Cola and China's COFCO Corporation.
The first phase of the plant involved investment of 500 million yuan (76 million U.S. dollars).
As Coca-Cola's third-largest market, China offers exciting opportunities and the firm has full confidence in the Chinese market, said James Quincey, President and Chief Executive Officer of Coca-Cola.
Quincey said the firm will continue to work with COFCO to offer new products for Chinese consumers.
JAC, Volkswagen to jointly develop multi-functional cars
November 28th, 2017Anhui Jianghuai Automobile (JAC Motors) and Volkswagen Monday signed a memorandum on a joint venture to develop and market multi-function vehicles.
The two companies will discuss possible options for a joint venture which will develop pickup trucks, MPVs and electric cars.
The venture will be half-owned by JAC and half-owned by Volkswagen. It will be based in Hefei, capital city of central China's Anhui Province, hometown of JAC.
It will be the second joint venture between JAC and Volkswagen, as the two companies signed an agreement in Germany in June to establish a 50-50 joint venture to develop, produce and market new energy cars and related mobility services.