Survey: Chinese Mainland Most Preferred Job Location in Asia

Posted by Reading Time: < 1 minute

Feb. 25 – The Chinese mainland is now considered the most preferred job assignment destination in Asia for multinationals, reports a survey done by a top accounting firm.

Among the 112 companies surveyed, seventy-eight percent chose the Chinese mainland as their key assignment location in Asia, followed by Singapore at 43 percent and Hong Kong at 39 percent.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey results showed that the Chinese mainland was considered a key investment target in the region for multinationals because of its market potential and sustainable business growth.

The mainland “is still anticipated to grow as an assignment location, albeit at a slower rate due to the global economic downturn,” said Rebecca Lai, director of PwC.

One example of such a company is language training school, English First (EF), which shifted its regional headquarters from Hong Kong to Shanghai in 2007 because of its huge market in the mainland.

The respondents also complained that foreign applicants usually lacked suitable skills for the mainland market. Thus they considered it preferable to employ Chinese nationals with overseas work experience or other regional Chinese expatriates.

“Foreign employees require higher salary packages, therefore, cost-performance is the driving force for multinationals to recruit more local people, ” Zhu Ning, marketing director of human resource provider Randstad told Xinhua.