Young foreigners hunt jobs in China amid crisis
BEIJING — When the best job Mikala
Reasbeck could find after college in Boston was counting pills
part-time in a drugstore for $7 an hour, she took the drastic step of
jumping on a plane to Beijing in February to look for work.
A week after she started looking, the 23-year-old from Wheeling, West Virginia, had a full-time job teaching English.
"I applied for jobs all over the U.S. There just weren't any," said
Reasbeck, who speaks no Chinese but had volunteered at the 2008 Beijing
Olympics. In China, she said, "the jobs are so easy to find. And there
are so many."
Young foreigners like Reasbeck are coming to China to look for work in
its unfamiliar but less bleak economy, driven by the worst job markets
in decades in the United States, Europe and some Asian countries.
Many do basic work such as teaching English, a service in demand from
Chinese businesspeople and students. But a growing number are arriving
with skills and experience in computers, finance and other fields.
"China is really the land of opportunity now, compared to their home
countries," said Chris Watkins, manager for China and Hong Kong of MRI
China Group, a headhunting firm. "This includes college graduates as
well as maybe more established businesspeople, entrepreneurs and
executives from companies around the world."
Watkins said the number of resumes his company receives from abroad has tripled over the past 18 months.
China's job market has been propped up by Beijing's 4 trillion yuan
($586 billion) stimulus, which helped to boost growth to 7.9 percent
from a year earlier in the quarter that ended June 30, up from 6.1
percent the previous quarter. The government says millions of jobs will
be created this year, though as many as 12 million job-seekers still
will be unable to find work.
Andrew Carr, a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate, saw China as a
safer alternative after classmates' offers of Wall Street jobs were
withdrawn due to the economic turmoil.
Passing up opportunities in New York, San Francisco and Boston, Carr
started work in August at bangyibang.com, a Web site in the southern
Chinese city of Shenzhen that lets the public or companies advertise and
pay for help in carrying out business research, getting into schools,
finding people and other tasks.
"I noticed the turn the economy was taking, and decided it would be best
to go directly to China," said Carr, who studied Chinese for eight
years.
Most of his classmates stayed in the United States and have taken some unusual jobs — one as a fishing guide in Alaska.
China can be more accessible to job hunters than economies where getting
work permits is harder, such as Russia and some European Union
countries.
Employers need government permission to hire foreigners, but authorities
promise an answer within 15 working days, compared with a wait of
months or longer that might be required in some other countries. An
employer has to explain why it needs to hire a foreigner instead of a
Chinese national, but the government says it gives special consideration
to people with technical or management skills.
Rules were tightened ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, apparently to
keep out possible protesters. That forced some foreign workers to leave
as their visas expired.
Some 217,000 foreigners held work permits at the end of 2008, up from
210,000 a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Thousands more use temporary business visas and go abroad regularly to
renew them.
Reasbeck said it took her two months to find the drugstore job after she
graduated from Boston's Emerson College with a degree in writing,
literature and publishing. She said she applied to as many as 50 employers nationwide.
Today, on top of her teaching job, she works part-time recruiting other
native English-speaking teachers. She makes 14,000 to 16,000 yuan
($2,000 to $2,300) a month.
"I could have a pretty comfortable life here on not a very high salary. English teachers are in high demand," she said.
Reasbeck said most of her college classmates are in part-time jobs or unemployed.
"People are sleeping on their mom's couches, as far as I know," she said.
While many jobs require at least a smattering of Chinese, some employers
that need other skills are hiring people who do not speak the language.
Bangyibang.com's founder and CEO, Grant Yu, has five foreign employees
in his 35-member work force. Yu plans to add more and said he might hire
applicants who cannot speak Chinese if they have other skills.
"I don't believe language is the biggest obstacle in communication, as
long as he or she has a strong learning ability," Yu said.
Feng Li, a partner in a Chinese-Canadian private fund in Beijing that
invests in the mining industry, said he needs native speakers of foreign
languages to read legal documents and communicate with clients abroad.
He plans to recruit up to six foreign employees.
"We don't need Chinese guys who speak English like me," Feng said.
Some foreigners see China not just as a refuge but as a source of opportunities they might not get at home.
"Having one or two years on your resume of China experiences is only
going to help you back at headquarters in the United States or if you
apply for business schools," said Shaun Rein, managing director of China
Market Research Group in Shanghai.
A 28-year-old former London banker took a job a year ago with a Chinese
private equity firm after the crisis devastated his industry at home. He
said that even though he spoke no Chinese, his experience and contacts
made him a sought-after asset in China, a market that he said offers "a
much faster route to a top-level position."
"I actually earn more out here," said the banker, who asked not to be
identified by name at his Chinese employer's request. "And the hours are
much shorter."
Konstantin Schamber, a 27-year-old German, passed up possible jobs at
home to become business manager for a Beijing law firm, where he is the
only foreign employee.
"I believe China is the same place as the United States used to be in
the 1930s that attracts a lot of people who'd like to have either money
or career opportunities," Schamber said.
Job hunters from other Asian countries also are looking to China.
An Kwang-jin, a 30-year-old South Korean photographer, has worked as a
freelancer for a year in the eastern city of Qingdao. He said China
offered more opportunities as South Korea struggles with a sluggish
economy.
Still, foreigners will face more competition from a rising number of
educated, English-speaking young Chinese, some of them returning from
the West with work experience, Rein said.
"You have a lot of Chinese from top universities who are making
$500-$600 a month," Rein said. "Making a case that you are much better
than they are is very hard."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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