The Transformation of Linfen
China’s once most notoriously polluted city now leads the way in environmental clean-up for the entire country.
Poll: Albertans Split on Chinese Investment in the Province
The University of Alberta’s China Institute polled 1,210 people just days before China National Offshore Oil Co. announced its controversial $15.1-billion deal to take over Calgary-based Nexen Inc..
“On balance, it’s a mix of positive negative. Albertans are quite conflicted in their views of China,” said institute director Gordon Houlden in an interview.
The survey, which is conducted annually, found 37 per cent of those polled agreed partial Chinese investment in Alberta is acceptable, with 36 per cent disagreeing and 27 per cent undecided.
But the numbers were much more extreme when it came to full ownership — only 15 per cent agreed it is acceptable, 64 per cent disagreed and 21 per cent neither agreed nor disagreed.
Attitudes in the survey were divided starkly along political lines, with supporters of the right-wing Wildrose Party much less enthusiastic about Chinese investment than voters further left on the political spectrum.
“I think that the wariness of China has an ideological dimension as well as an economic dimension,” said Houlden.
On the more positive side, the poll suggested Albertans are not particularly threatened by China’s rise as an economic power, are in favour of exporting oil and gas to China and view China as a stable trading partner.
But Houlden said he was disappointed that only 32 per cent of those polls agreed the ability to speak Chinese will become important to Albertans.
“If only Chinese learn English and our culture, we’re really at a disadvantage. And that’s one that I think we need to redress,” he said.
The telephone poll’s estimated sampling error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points at 95 per cent confidence.
– The Canadian Press
Survey: Chinese University Graduates Increasingly Preferred by Recruiters
Further to previous posts on the rise of Chinese universities in international rankings and China and Canada EMBA programs, here’s a report on another survey focusing on graduate recruitment. As for Canadian universities, Universite de Montreal saw a big bump upwards.
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The 2012 Global Employability Survey, which is being released exclusively in the International Herald Tribune, characterized the ideal young candidate on the basis of skills, personal qualities and the schools they attended. The study, a collaboration of Emerging, a French consulting firm, and Trendence, a German research institute specializing in recruitment, asked hundreds of companies what they looked for when hiring recent graduates, regardless of their course of study.
The study also asked employers what universities produced the ideal young graduates.
In terms of desirable schools, U.S. and British universities retained their commanding lead. The list is dominated by the same names that top most rankings: Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford, M.I.T., Columbia, Princeton and Imperial College London, with Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main rounding out the top 10.
But Asian schools are also emerging. The most striking finding this year is the growth in the reputations of universities in China.
Just outside the top 10 is Peking University, which leapt to No. 11 from No. 109 in just one year.
This year, four mainland Chinese universities made the top 100, as opposed to only two last year. Shanghai Jiao Tong University went to No. 44 from No. 139. Meanwhile, H.K.U.S.T. jumped to No. 46 from No. 94.
The only Indian institution to make the list both last year and this year, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, rose to No. 35 from No. 134.
The fact that top Asian universities are being held in higher esteem is both a reflection on their success in preparing students for the global work force and the realization among employers that students trained in Asia are better equipped to work there.
“A lot of employers are looking for global players,” said Tony Chan, H.K.U.S.T.’s president.
Dr. Chan attributes part of his institution’s success to the fact that it bridges the gap between China and the rest of world.
“China being the second-largest economy in the world is a huge factor,” he said by telephone from Hong Kong. His institution’s strength, he explained, lies in building bridges between different business cultures and languages.
“We are one of the most international universities in China,” he said. “We hope to train graduates that know both East and West.”
Guy Breton, rector of the Université de Montreal, also attributed his institution’s position in the global ranking — No. 30 in the recent study, up from No. 46 in 2011 — to a successful combination of several cultures.
“We teach in French; we are the most European of the North American universities, and I think that is of added value to employers,” he said by telephone.
According to Dr. Breton, Montreal’s multiculturalism and multilingualism contribute to his university’s openness and worldliness, something global employers are increasingly seeking.
“We are exposed to the international reality,” he said.
The Emerging/Trendence survey was conducted in two waves. Initially, 2,500 recruiters in 20 countries were asked to complete a personalized online survey designed to characterize the ideal new graduate.
Several months later, more questions were asked of top recruiters from 10 countries deemed to be active employers. Those supplementary interviews resulted in the list of the top 150 global institutions in terms of graduate employability.
In ranking the importance of second languages, aside from English, recruiters responded that they appreciated Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, Russian and Portuguese, in that order.
Global recruiters also listed the countries that produced the best graduates: the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, India, China, France, Australia and Switzerland.
The quality portion of the survey found that international recruiters appreciated soft skills like adaptability, communications and the “ability to work in a team,” more than leadership qualities or “the ability to work under pressure.”
Steffen Laick, a top recruiter at Ernst & Young, the accounting firm, agreed that the ability to work with a team was important. Besides a strong and focused academic record, he also looked at extracurricular activities.
“Not everyone can have been a volunteer firefighter,” he said by telephone. Showing recruiters that you have done something more than just fixated on studies is very important, he said.
The universities also mattered, he said, because there might not be much more for recruiters to go on when the candidate is quite young and lacking in work experience.
Many well-known universities have partnerships with global recruiters, which can help graduates in their applications and interviews. In other cases, universities have alumni networks that put recent graduates ahead of competitors from lesser-known schools.
Not all emerging economies contributed to the top universities in terms of their attractiveness to employers, the survey found. Universities in Brazil, Russia and the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas, for example, did not do as well in the rankings as Asian schools.
Brazil, which has the sixth-largest economy in the world, had only Fundação Getulio Vargas, at No. 95, and the Universidade de São Paulo, at No. 112.
The study also lists two Mexican universities — Tecnológico de Monterrey and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México — at 110 and 113, respectively, but no other Latin American universities were represented.
“It is surprising that Brazil and Mexico, that have really good universities, are low on the list; they are still too focused on American universities,” Sandrine Belloc of Emerging, the company that designed the study, said about recruiters in those countries.
Russia’s only contribution to the list is Moscow State University , in 150th place.
– NYT
China-based Ratings Firm Set Up to challenge US Dominance
This is an important development. China’s Dagong has been doing independent ratings of domestic and international firms and government debt for some time now. The collaboration is the way forward to break the US oligopoly in a key financial function.
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The groups behind a new China-based ratings firm said Wednesday they planned to break the dominance of US agencies in assessing state and company debt, a much-criticised part of the financial system.
China’s Dagong, Egan-Jones Ratings (EJR) of the United States and RusRating in Russia are to set up a joint venture within six months to be headquartered in Hong Kong, the companies said at a news conference unveiling the partnership.
The three partners are inviting “organisations from every country” to join Universal Credit Rating Group, and Dagong chairman Guan Jianzhong said dozens of companies from more than 20 countries have expressed an interest.
The new group is hoping to break the stranglehold of US-based Fitch, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, which provide vital risk assessments to investors about debt instruments, in the next five years.
“I believe we can do this. Our goal is to form a new system with the synergy of everybody that will balance the existing system,” Guan said.
The global financial crisis proved that the current international ratings system has flaws that “jeopardise human prosperity and development” and needs to be reformed, the firms said in a document they dubbed the “Beijing Declaration”.
– AFP
Jaywalkers Fined in Shijiazhuang
Has been some talk of doing this in the media. Following the Singapore model of fining to get people in line. Think similar tactics should be adopted in China to rein in a number of bad habits.
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| A new campaign initiated by the government of the city of Shijiazhuang in north China’s Hebei province will make pedestrians think twice about jaywalking.
Fines of 5 to 50 yuan ($0.80 to $8) will be levied on people who cross pedestrian walkways when the light is red as part of a two-month traffic safety campaign initiated by the city’s civilization office and traffic management bureau on Tuesday. It is common for pedestrians in most Chinese cities to ignore traffic regulations, with large crowds of people crossing against red lights on a regular basis. One of the city’s traffic monitors recently reported that about 600 people jaywalked within one hour at one of the city’s intersections. Wu Ruiqi, director of the traffic management bureau, said the first three people within a given group of jaywalkers at major intersections will be fined 5 to 50 yuan, while entire groups of jaywalkers at smaller intersections will be fined. Traffic police, coordinators and volunteers have been sent to 400 intersections across the city to enforce the new rule, Wu said. Those who cannot afford the fines will be given the option of volunteering to guide traffic and pedestrians at one of the targeted intersections or receive related education instead, Wu said. Xinhua |
Charts: China’s Mobile Internet
Interesting set of charts on developments in China’s mobile internet in 2012:
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-pushing-forward-mobile-internet-061045354.html
– Tech in Asia
Beijing and Montreal on Lonely Planet’s Top 10 Cities to Visit in 2013
Lonely Planet’s top 10 cities to visit in 2013
1. San Francisco, US
2. Amsterdam, Netherlands
3. Hyderabad, India
4. Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland
5. Beijing, China
6. Christchurch, New Zealand
7. Hobart, Australia
8. Montreal, Canada
9. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
10. Puerto Iguazu, Argentina
G&M Reporter: Canada Right to Protect Resources
This is a fair commentary: each project should be judged on its own merits but Ottawa must be more transparent about why it rejected Petronas’ bid for Progress Energy.
Meanwhile, Harper promises more clarity.
Figuring Out China’s Unemployment
The official unemployment rate, which stays suspiciously close to 4% in the deepest downturns and the wildest booms, is no reliable guide.
Following last week’s gross domestic product data download, the focus is on the outlook for China’s economy in the fourth quarter and beyond. China Real Time mines the best alternative sources of data on China’s labor market as a guide:
The best overall measure comes from China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. They publish a quarterly report on job opportunities and job seekers at local employment bureaus in 100 cities up and down the country.
The latest reading shows that in the third quarter demand for labor continued to outstrip supply. The ratio of job opportunities to job seekers stayed steady at 1.05, unchanged from the second quarter.
That’s a stark contrast to the 4th quarter of 2008, when the ratio plunged to 0.84 – reflecting mass layoffs in the export and construction sectors after the double whammy of global financial crisis and home grown real estate crunch.
A third quarter survey of more than 4,000 mainland firms by consultancy Manpower also suggested that most were planning to take on more workers, or keep their headcount steady, in the fourth quarter.
Manpower’s net employment outlook – the difference between the percentage of firms planning to add more workers, and the percentage planning to reduce headcount — edged down to 16 for the fourth quarter from 17 in the third. That’s in line with the average level in the years before the financial crisis.
– WSJ China Real Time Blog
First Inland Special Economic Zone in Ningxia to Boost China-Arab Trade and Investment
The construction of a new economic pilot zone, the first of its kind in China’s inland areas, has started in the country’s northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
The pilot zone and the four-square-km bonded area in the zone aim to deepen the opening up of China’s western inland areas to countries located directly west of China, especially in order to boost trade, investment and friendly exchanges between China and the Arab world, said Wang Zhengwei, chairman of the regional government.
According to the establishment program approved by the State Council in September, projects in the zone will enjoy 66 preferential policies in investment, tax, finance and land use after its establishment.
The League of Arab States has become China’s seventh-largest trade partner. Trade between China and the member countries surged 34.7 percent to 195.9 billion U.S. dollars last year.
Ningxia is the only provincial-level autonomous region for the Hui people, the largest Muslim ethnic group in China. About 30 percent of the region’s population is Hui.
As many people in the area share religious beliefs and customs with Muslims living in Arab countries, the region is a perfect platform for boosting cooperation with those countries, according to Wang.
– China Daily