BEIJING: China's controversial government-owned enterprises have launched an unprecedented global search for top-rank talent to improve their poor performances.

On Monday, the Chinese government ran huge advertisements seeking 'talented candidates from home and abroad' to fill 20 senior posts at 12 companies, in industries ranging from nuclear power to textiles and cars.

The ad campaign reflects one of the most sweeping hiring sprees ever conducted by the 129 huge but inefficient state firms. It also added fuel to the ongoing debate among local scholars and netizens about the widening gap between private entrepreneurs and these state-owned behemoths.

Their list of unfair advantages have 'now extended from market monopolies and cheap loans to even a big stable of top talent that smaller companies can ill afford', said one netizen on Internet portal sohu.com.

The ads, which ran this week in China's major English- and Chinese-language dailies, gave no details about pay.

But a Beijing-based headhunter, who wanted to be named only as Mr Li, reckoned that candidates for positions as general managers - which are similar to chief executive officers in Singapore - could be offered handsome annual salaries of more than 2 million yuan (S$398,800).

The attractive pay and job stability at state-owned enterprises have made them the top choice in a survey this month of more than 200,000 college graduates seeking jobs. Private enterprises ranked fourth.

But while state-owned enterprises have long recruited from a ready pool of local applicants, this week's talent search is different, said scholars.

'Many state-owned enterprises have become globalised... so they need people with overseas expertise to make them more globally competitive,' said Professor Xin Xiangyang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Indeed, many of the positions offered were for companies whose operations spanned the globe, such as the China State Construction Engineering Corporation and China Shipping.

Some of the posts advertised required English and French proficiency, while others specified overseas experience.

This indicated that government companies were now more open to foreigners, and were also trying to lure back overseas-educated Chinese executives, said Mr Li.

The global search for talent also comes at a time when Beijing is facing mounting criticism of its state-owned enterprises, which should be delivering much better results given their huge advantages.

Just one week before the ads came out, Beijing released last year's profit rankings for 108 state-owned enterprises, which did not include the big four state banks.

The top 10 firms had combined profits of US$78 billion (S$106 billion), helped by a 4 trillion yuan state stimulus that further cemented their dominance in the rapidly recovering Chinese economy.

But this figure is still much lower than the US$138.5 billion chalked up by the top 10 most profitable American companies, which were in the throes of a recession.

State-owned enterprises were also found to be contributing less than the private sector to the economy, despite their huge size.

China's top 500 private companies paid more taxes and created more jobs than state-owned enterprises, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce said in a report this month.

Most private companies are doing better even though they are in an inferior position - with heavier tax burdens and fierce competition - than state enterprises, pointed out Tsinghua University economics research director Wei Jie.

The government-linked companies' unsatisfactory results make the recruitment of better managers even more urgent, analysts said.

But they have also raised questions about whether China's support of state-owned enterprises is worth the resources, which might be better spent helping private enterprises.

'Bloated state-owned enterprises have proven notoriously hard to reform in the past decade,' said Mr Li. 'The risk is that you pay for top talent and still get little change, while private firms choke.'

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Source - The Straits Times (http://www.straitstimes.com/Asia/China/Story/STIStory_573710.html)