Overseas graduate returnees seek opportunities in new first-tier cities
China Watch |
Updated: 2018-06-14 11:44
Editor's note: In this section, we update you on prominent stories related to China in the past few days.
Overseas graduate returnees seek opportunities in new first-tier cities
Overseas returnees scout for jobs at the 16th Conference on International Exchange of Professionals in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. [Photo by Xuan Hui/For China Daily]
China is embracing a massive influx of returnees, as a growing number of overseas-educated graduates return to the country to seek job opportunities, a recent report found.
Emerging new first-tier cities have gradually become popular destinations for returnees, holding increasing appeal than in previous years, according to the report released by business networking website LinkedIn.
The report said that while Shanghai and Beijing take the top two spots on the popular cities ranking list, they are gradually losing their appeal.
The eastern city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, home to e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and a branch of Chinese leading gaming outfit NetEase Inc, ranked fifth on the most attractive cities list, followed by Chengdu in Sichuan province and Nanjing in Jiangsu province.
Bank change to aid small businesses
Chinese 100 yuan banknotes are seen in a counting machine at a bank in Beijing, China, March 30, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]
China's central bank announced on Sunday it is cutting the cash required to be held in reserve in commercial banks by one-half percentage point starting July 5, a measure designed to make it easier to lend to small and microsized companies.
The amount of money, to be released by cutting the reserve requirement ratio in the five largest State-owned banks and 12 joint-stock commercial banks, could reach nearly 500 billion yuan ($76.9 billion), as the People's Bank of China, the central bank, estimated in a statement on its website.
This amount should be used "to support debt-to-equity swap projects on a market-oriented and legal basis, and to leverage the same amount of private capital participating in the investment", the statement said.
Another 200 billion yuan, to be freed from postal savings banks, city and non-county rural commercial banks, and foreign banks, will be loaned to small and micro-sized companies to lower their financing costs, it said.
A job fair held in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in April. [Xuan Hui / Asianewsphoto]
The official data showed that China's economic growth remained stable, but external uncertainties, which could affect domestic growth, have increased.
China's surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 4.8 percent in May, down by 0.1 percentage point compared with April, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on June 14.
But the year-on-year growth of industrial output, fixed-asset investment and retail sales all fell last month, the official data showed. Industrial output growth was 6.8 percent in May, compared with 7 percent in April.
Mao Shengyong, spokesman of the NBS, said the data showed that the country's economic growth remained stable, but external uncertainties, which could affect domestic growth, have increased.
The government vows to stimulate imports, especially in consumer goods and service sectors, by an cutting import tax, reducing institutional procedures, and other practical measures.
China will take an array of incentives to further boost imports to raise supply quality and drive domestic industrial upgrading, according to a decision made at an executive meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on June 13.
The Wednesday meeting has decided that more support will be given to importing daily consumer goods, medicine, as well as nursing and rehabilitation facilities to meet demand of consumption upgrading and improve supply quality.
Trade in emerging services will be boosted, and imports of producer services covering research and design, trade logistics, consulting services, energy conservation and environmental protection will be encouraged. "Our deficit in services trade may be turned into a catalyst for the upgrading of the services sector," Li said at the meeting.
The April statistics from the General Administration of Customs show a good momentum of China's foreign trade in the first quarter of this year. Trade in goods totaled 6.75 trillion yuan, up 9.4 percent year-on-year, and the trade surplus dropped 21.8 percent.
A supermarket displays prices in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo/China Daily]
China's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, rose 1.8 percent in May year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on June 9.
The growth of consumer inflation in May was slower than expected, down by 0.2 percentage points from the previous month.
China's producer price index (PPI), which measures the cost of goods at the factory gate, rose 4.1 percent year-on-year in May, the NBS said.
It was up from the 0.4 percent recorded in April, driven by growth in factory prices in the mining industry and raw material sector.
ZTE Logo seen at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain, Feb 28, 2018. [Photo/VCG]
Chinese telecom maker ZTE Corp has signed a deal with the US government that will lift a ban on it from buying US technology, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on June 7.
Ross said that ZTE and its affiliates have agreed to pay a $1 billion fine and set aside $400 million in an escrow account. ZTE also agreed to make compliance measures to replace the US Commerce Department's ban on the company's purchase of components from American suppliers for seven years. In return, the US government will remove the ban imposed in April.
ZTE accounts for about 10 percent of the global telecom gear market and is the fourth-largest smartphone vendor in the US, according to data from China International Capital Corp. Also, American companies provide an estimated 25 percent to 30 percent of components in ZTE's equipment.
ZTE has a relationship with a string of US suppliers and supports nearly 130,000 high-tech jobs in the US. Experts said earlier that the US ban on ZTE would cause losses for American suppliers such as Qualcomm and Intel.
Baby boomers take exam
Parents and family members await students outside the entrance to an examination site in Haian, Jiangsu province, during the annual national college entrance exams on Thursday. It was the first of two days of testing across the country. [Xu Jinbai/For China Daily]
The national college entrance exam－a make-or-break opportunity for Chinese students－started on Thursday, with a surge in test takers this year due to the "baby boom" at the start of the millennium.
About 9.75 million students were expected to take the exam, 350,000 more than in 2017 and the highest number in eight years, according to the Ministry of Education.
The exam, known in Chinese as gaokao, is pivotal for high school students, as it determines which universities they will be able to apply to－and potentially their future career prospects.
Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said many of those taking the gaokao this year were born in 2000, when the birthrate soared as parents saw it as an auspicious year to have a child.
That year saw about 17.71 million newborns, a number exceeded only in 2016－18.46 million－when China began to allow all couples to have two children, according to the National Health Commission.
A record 10.5 million people took the gaokao in 2008, but the number has declined steadily since.
Nation to bolster intellectual property protections
An employee works at a lab of SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), a leader in IC chip manufacturing. [Photo/IC]
China will strengthen its protection and management of intellectual property, accelerate the commercialization process, and help improve global IP protection practices and standards, officials said on June 5.
June 5 marks the 10th anniversary of the Outline of the National Intellectual Property Strategy issued by the State Council, China's Cabinet. The outline is the bedrock regulatory document for China's intellectual property protection.
The anniversary came after the European Union lodged an intellectual property rights complaint against China at the World Trade Organization on Friday, just as Beijing is embroiled in a similar dispute with the United States.
Yan Junqi, president of the Central Institute of Socialism, said China has paid more attention to intellectual property protection in the past five years, and IP related industries are seeing unprecedented opportunities for growth.
In the past decade, the number of patents from the Chinese mainland grew from 96,000 in 2007 to 1.3 million in 2017, ranking it third in the world behind just the US and Japan, according to the State Intellectual Property Office.
Shen Changyu, director of the office, said China's intellectual property protection mechanisms have seen overall improvement and greater transparency.
The Ministry of Public Security has coordinated local authorities in a crackdown on criminal gangs that manufactured and sold high-tech devices for cheating on the upcoming national college entrance examination, known as the gaokao, which starts on June 7 morning.
The campaign, launched in Liaoning, Shandong, Hubei, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in late May, resulted in the busting of 12 criminal gangs and the seizure of over 100,000 sets of wireless devices for cheating, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
An official from the ministry said that the illegal production, sale and use of wireless cheating equipment seriously jeopardizes the security of the examination, and undermines social justice and the credibility of the system.
People wave goodbye on Tuesday to students on a bus who are about to take national college entrance exams in Lu'an, Anhui province. The students were from Maotanchang Middle School in the city. [Han Suyuan/China News Service]
In late May, local authorities around the country arrested more than 50 criminal suspects from 12 criminal gangs, destroyed six equipment production lines and eight sales dens, and seized more than 100,000 sets of wireless equipment. The money involved amounted to several hundred million yuan, or many tens of millions of dollars.
Since February, the ministry has taken action against cybercrime and cracked down on technological cheating aides, the illegal production and sale of eavesdropping equipment and examination fraud. Police have smashed more than 100 gangs and arrested over 500 suspects.
Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said the ways students cheat are constantly changing, and efforts to prevent cheating should be appreciated.
Moderate monetary easing might have started and would continue for some time as China looks for more ways to plug the medium and long-term liquidity shortfalls in its banking system, said experts.
The flexible adjustment is also necessary to prevent an economic slowdown in the second half of this year, they said.
The banking system may face stress when it needs to pay back around 498 billion yuan ($77.76 billion) under the medium-term lending facility (MLF) later this week. This, coupled with other factors that will reduce liquidity including tax payments and bond maturity, would mean that lenders would require new channels to raise funds.
Meanwhile, monetary authorities decided on June 1 to expand the range of financial instruments that can be pledged when commercial and policy banks borrow money through MLFs, an innovative monetary policy tool to inject base money.
According to the announcement, AA rated bonds and above, backed by credit to small and micro companies, the green economy and the agriculture sector; quality loans to small and micro enterprises and green businesses; and other corporate bonds rated AA+ and AA, could be used as collaterals for MLF operations.
Before the announcement, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, only accepted high-grade bonds, including Treasury bonds, central bank bills, policy bank financial bonds, local government bonds and AAA rated corporate bonds.
All rights reserved. Copying or sharing of any content for other than personal use is prohibited without prior written permission.
Editor's note: In this section, we update you on prominent stories related to China in the past few days.
Overseas graduate returnees seek opportunities in new first-tier cities
Overseas returnees scout for jobs at the 16th Conference on International Exchange of Professionals in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. [Photo by Xuan Hui/For China Daily]
China is embracing a massive influx of returnees, as a growing number of overseas-educated graduates return to the country to seek job opportunities, a recent report found.
Emerging new first-tier cities have gradually become popular destinations for returnees, holding increasing appeal than in previous years, according to the report released by business networking website LinkedIn.
The report said that while Shanghai and Beijing take the top two spots on the popular cities ranking list, they are gradually losing their appeal.
The eastern city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, home to e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and a branch of Chinese leading gaming outfit NetEase Inc, ranked fifth on the most attractive cities list, followed by Chengdu in Sichuan province and Nanjing in Jiangsu province.
Bank change to aid small businesses
Chinese 100 yuan banknotes are seen in a counting machine at a bank in Beijing, China, March 30, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]
China's central bank announced on Sunday it is cutting the cash required to be held in reserve in commercial banks by one-half percentage point starting July 5, a measure designed to make it easier to lend to small and microsized companies.
The amount of money, to be released by cutting the reserve requirement ratio in the five largest State-owned banks and 12 joint-stock commercial banks, could reach nearly 500 billion yuan ($76.9 billion), as the People's Bank of China, the central bank, estimated in a statement on its website.
This amount should be used "to support debt-to-equity swap projects on a market-oriented and legal basis, and to leverage the same amount of private capital participating in the investment", the statement said.
Another 200 billion yuan, to be freed from postal savings banks, city and non-county rural commercial banks, and foreign banks, will be loaned to small and micro-sized companies to lower their financing costs, it said.
A job fair held in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in April. [Xuan Hui / Asianewsphoto]
The official data showed that China's economic growth remained stable, but external uncertainties, which could affect domestic growth, have increased.
China's surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 4.8 percent in May, down by 0.1 percentage point compared with April, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on June 14.
But the year-on-year growth of industrial output, fixed-asset investment and retail sales all fell last month, the official data showed. Industrial output growth was 6.8 percent in May, compared with 7 percent in April.
Mao Shengyong, spokesman of the NBS, said the data showed that the country's economic growth remained stable, but external uncertainties, which could affect domestic growth, have increased.
The government vows to stimulate imports, especially in consumer goods and service sectors, by an cutting import tax, reducing institutional procedures, and other practical measures.
China will take an array of incentives to further boost imports to raise supply quality and drive domestic industrial upgrading, according to a decision made at an executive meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on June 13.
The Wednesday meeting has decided that more support will be given to importing daily consumer goods, medicine, as well as nursing and rehabilitation facilities to meet demand of consumption upgrading and improve supply quality.
Trade in emerging services will be boosted, and imports of producer services covering research and design, trade logistics, consulting services, energy conservation and environmental protection will be encouraged. "Our deficit in services trade may be turned into a catalyst for the upgrading of the services sector," Li said at the meeting.
The April statistics from the General Administration of Customs show a good momentum of China's foreign trade in the first quarter of this year. Trade in goods totaled 6.75 trillion yuan, up 9.4 percent year-on-year, and the trade surplus dropped 21.8 percent.
A supermarket displays prices in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo/China Daily]
China's consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, rose 1.8 percent in May year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on June 9.
The growth of consumer inflation in May was slower than expected, down by 0.2 percentage points from the previous month.
China's producer price index (PPI), which measures the cost of goods at the factory gate, rose 4.1 percent year-on-year in May, the NBS said.
It was up from the 0.4 percent recorded in April, driven by growth in factory prices in the mining industry and raw material sector.
ZTE Logo seen at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain, Feb 28, 2018. [Photo/VCG]
Chinese telecom maker ZTE Corp has signed a deal with the US government that will lift a ban on it from buying US technology, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on June 7.
Ross said that ZTE and its affiliates have agreed to pay a $1 billion fine and set aside $400 million in an escrow account. ZTE also agreed to make compliance measures to replace the US Commerce Department's ban on the company's purchase of components from American suppliers for seven years. In return, the US government will remove the ban imposed in April.
ZTE accounts for about 10 percent of the global telecom gear market and is the fourth-largest smartphone vendor in the US, according to data from China International Capital Corp. Also, American companies provide an estimated 25 percent to 30 percent of components in ZTE's equipment.
ZTE has a relationship with a string of US suppliers and supports nearly 130,000 high-tech jobs in the US. Experts said earlier that the US ban on ZTE would cause losses for American suppliers such as Qualcomm and Intel.
Baby boomers take exam
Parents and family members await students outside the entrance to an examination site in Haian, Jiangsu province, during the annual national college entrance exams on Thursday. It was the first of two days of testing across the country. [Xu Jinbai/For China Daily]
The national college entrance exam－a make-or-break opportunity for Chinese students－started on Thursday, with a surge in test takers this year due to the "baby boom" at the start of the millennium.
About 9.75 million students were expected to take the exam, 350,000 more than in 2017 and the highest number in eight years, according to the Ministry of Education.
The exam, known in Chinese as gaokao, is pivotal for high school students, as it determines which universities they will be able to apply to－and potentially their future career prospects.
Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said many of those taking the gaokao this year were born in 2000, when the birthrate soared as parents saw it as an auspicious year to have a child.
That year saw about 17.71 million newborns, a number exceeded only in 2016－18.46 million－when China began to allow all couples to have two children, according to the National Health Commission.
A record 10.5 million people took the gaokao in 2008, but the number has declined steadily since.
Nation to bolster intellectual property protections
An employee works at a lab of SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), a leader in IC chip manufacturing. [Photo/IC]
China will strengthen its protection and management of intellectual property, accelerate the commercialization process, and help improve global IP protection practices and standards, officials said on June 5.
June 5 marks the 10th anniversary of the Outline of the National Intellectual Property Strategy issued by the State Council, China's Cabinet. The outline is the bedrock regulatory document for China's intellectual property protection.
The anniversary came after the European Union lodged an intellectual property rights complaint against China at the World Trade Organization on Friday, just as Beijing is embroiled in a similar dispute with the United States.
Yan Junqi, president of the Central Institute of Socialism, said China has paid more attention to intellectual property protection in the past five years, and IP related industries are seeing unprecedented opportunities for growth.
In the past decade, the number of patents from the Chinese mainland grew from 96,000 in 2007 to 1.3 million in 2017, ranking it third in the world behind just the US and Japan, according to the State Intellectual Property Office.
Shen Changyu, director of the office, said China's intellectual property protection mechanisms have seen overall improvement and greater transparency.
The Ministry of Public Security has coordinated local authorities in a crackdown on criminal gangs that manufactured and sold high-tech devices for cheating on the upcoming national college entrance examination, known as the gaokao, which starts on June 7 morning.
The campaign, launched in Liaoning, Shandong, Hubei, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in late May, resulted in the busting of 12 criminal gangs and the seizure of over 100,000 sets of wireless devices for cheating, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
An official from the ministry said that the illegal production, sale and use of wireless cheating equipment seriously jeopardizes the security of the examination, and undermines social justice and the credibility of the system.
People wave goodbye on Tuesday to students on a bus who are about to take national college entrance exams in Lu'an, Anhui province. The students were from Maotanchang Middle School in the city. [Han Suyuan/China News Service]
In late May, local authorities around the country arrested more than 50 criminal suspects from 12 criminal gangs, destroyed six equipment production lines and eight sales dens, and seized more than 100,000 sets of wireless equipment. The money involved amounted to several hundred million yuan, or many tens of millions of dollars.
Since February, the ministry has taken action against cybercrime and cracked down on technological cheating aides, the illegal production and sale of eavesdropping equipment and examination fraud. Police have smashed more than 100 gangs and arrested over 500 suspects.
Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said the ways students cheat are constantly changing, and efforts to prevent cheating should be appreciated.
Moderate monetary easing might have started and would continue for some time as China looks for more ways to plug the medium and long-term liquidity shortfalls in its banking system, said experts.
The flexible adjustment is also necessary to prevent an economic slowdown in the second half of this year, they said.
The banking system may face stress when it needs to pay back around 498 billion yuan ($77.76 billion) under the medium-term lending facility (MLF) later this week. This, coupled with other factors that will reduce liquidity including tax payments and bond maturity, would mean that lenders would require new channels to raise funds.
Meanwhile, monetary authorities decided on June 1 to expand the range of financial instruments that can be pledged when commercial and policy banks borrow money through MLFs, an innovative monetary policy tool to inject base money.
According to the announcement, AA rated bonds and above, backed by credit to small and micro companies, the green economy and the agriculture sector; quality loans to small and micro enterprises and green businesses; and other corporate bonds rated AA+ and AA, could be used as collaterals for MLF operations.
Before the announcement, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, only accepted high-grade bonds, including Treasury bonds, central bank bills, policy bank financial bonds, local government bonds and AAA rated corporate bonds.
