China recruiting cheap talents from abroad
Sunday, 28 December 2008
From Fazle Rashid
NEW YORK, Dec 27: The US and the West have often grumbled about China enjoying an unfair edge over them in global trade. The main accusation against China has been cheap labour and an underrated currency. China was put under repeated pressure to make an unward revision of its currency but to no avail.
It went along its way paying no attention to the clamour. China's economy has been hit as hard as others. But this failed to deter China from its goals. Despite the downturn, China has announced its determination to produce an aircraft carrier and beef up its patrolling the Pacific.
But what has amazed and bewilder the rest of the world reeling under an economic meltdown is China's penchant for looking cheap talents, its main prop behind becoming the fastest growing economy in the world with double digit growth rate for past six years.
Millions of jobs have been lost worldwide. China thinks it is time to recruit talents at a cheaper rate. Executives from China's largest financial institutions are travelling to recruit talents from abroad. The recruiters main thrust has been on the financial sector. The Chinese recruiting team made of 27 senior executives from the financial institutes had visited London and Chicago before coming to New York. The Chinese team will recruit up to 170 mid-level bankers. China offers opportunity even its own economy slows, the New York Times (NYT) reported yesterday.
Chinese regulators have stepped up their policing of banks to make sure no one is taking undue risk. China's bank regulators have taken a series of steps to encourage banks to lend heavily as part of a broader government's effort to halt an economic slowdown unfolding with alarming speed, the NYT said.
China's financial institutions appear to have weathered the crisis better than others. Bad loans are already showing an upward trend, especially in the property market where mortgage default risk is growing at an accelerated pace.
There is a growing tendency among Americans to borrow from foreigners, particularly China to meet their heavy spending. Problem is not that Americans spend too much but that foreigners save too much, an expert said. China have piled up so much excess savings that they lend money to the United States at low rates. The US economy is so heavily dependent on China that it would take years to wriggle out of the cycle.
What is worrying for America is China's heavy investment here. In the past one decade, China has invested upward of $1.0 trillion into American government bonds and government-backed mortgage debt. That has lowered interest rates and helped fuel a historic consumption, NYT said. China, the experts say, lulled American consumers into complacency about their spendthrift habits. This was a blinking red light and we should have reacted to it, NYT quoted Harvard professor and former chief economist of the IMF as saying.
The United States is likely to be more addicted than ever to foreign creditors to finance record government spending to revive its shattered economy.
The people in America are saying that the greatest challenge for President-elect Obama will be to save capitalism and free market economy from collapsing like house of cards. The Fed chief Ben Barnanke with wreckage around him regretted that more was not done to regulate financial institutions and mortgage providers. China's heavy lending to US is now seen as risky because Beijing could decide to withdraw money at a moment's notice thus creating a run on the dollar.
The US bid to make IMF act as a watchdog for currency manipulation by China which it though would put China to more global pressure, failed.
NEW YORK, Dec 27: The US and the West have often grumbled about China enjoying an unfair edge over them in global trade. The main accusation against China has been cheap labour and an underrated currency. China was put under repeated pressure to make an unward revision of its currency but to no avail.
It went along its way paying no attention to the clamour. China's economy has been hit as hard as others. But this failed to deter China from its goals. Despite the downturn, China has announced its determination to produce an aircraft carrier and beef up its patrolling the Pacific.
But what has amazed and bewilder the rest of the world reeling under an economic meltdown is China's penchant for looking cheap talents, its main prop behind becoming the fastest growing economy in the world with double digit growth rate for past six years.
Millions of jobs have been lost worldwide. China thinks it is time to recruit talents at a cheaper rate. Executives from China's largest financial institutions are travelling to recruit talents from abroad. The recruiters main thrust has been on the financial sector. The Chinese recruiting team made of 27 senior executives from the financial institutes had visited London and Chicago before coming to New York. The Chinese team will recruit up to 170 mid-level bankers. China offers opportunity even its own economy slows, the New York Times (NYT) reported yesterday.
Chinese regulators have stepped up their policing of banks to make sure no one is taking undue risk. China's bank regulators have taken a series of steps to encourage banks to lend heavily as part of a broader government's effort to halt an economic slowdown unfolding with alarming speed, the NYT said.
China's financial institutions appear to have weathered the crisis better than others. Bad loans are already showing an upward trend, especially in the property market where mortgage default risk is growing at an accelerated pace.
There is a growing tendency among Americans to borrow from foreigners, particularly China to meet their heavy spending. Problem is not that Americans spend too much but that foreigners save too much, an expert said. China have piled up so much excess savings that they lend money to the United States at low rates. The US economy is so heavily dependent on China that it would take years to wriggle out of the cycle.
What is worrying for America is China's heavy investment here. In the past one decade, China has invested upward of $1.0 trillion into American government bonds and government-backed mortgage debt. That has lowered interest rates and helped fuel a historic consumption, NYT said. China, the experts say, lulled American consumers into complacency about their spendthrift habits. This was a blinking red light and we should have reacted to it, NYT quoted Harvard professor and former chief economist of the IMF as saying.
The United States is likely to be more addicted than ever to foreign creditors to finance record government spending to revive its shattered economy.
The people in America are saying that the greatest challenge for President-elect Obama will be to save capitalism and free market economy from collapsing like house of cards. The Fed chief Ben Barnanke with wreckage around him regretted that more was not done to regulate financial institutions and mortgage providers. China's heavy lending to US is now seen as risky because Beijing could decide to withdraw money at a moment's notice thus creating a run on the dollar.
The US bid to make IMF act as a watchdog for currency manipulation by China which it though would put China to more global pressure, failed.