Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Tuesday filed for its long-awaited initial public offering, one of the largest in history.

Alibaba –described as eBay, Amazon and Google rolled into one – was evaluated at $150 billion to $200 billion. Its stock debut immediately gave it a higher market value than Facebook and Amazon.

It was estimated that the Hangzhou-based tech behemoth to raise $15 billion to $20 billion, exceeding Facebook’s record-breaking $16 billion IPO in May 2012.

Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, who was turned down for a number of jobs before starting his own e-commerce empire, including a manager post at a Kentucky Fried Chicken store.

Alibaba’s businesses include online shopping, business-to-business sales, online payments, shipping, wholesale trade and cloud computing. Alibaba’s retail marketplace last year processed 11.3 billion orders from 231 million active buyers for a total of $248 billion in purchases, more than the transaction volume on eBay and Amazon combined. On Singles Day in November, a popular holiday in China for online shopping, the company’s online retail portals processed $5.8 billion in spending. Alibaba earned net income reached about $1.4 billion last year with $5.6 billion in revenue.

While little known outside of China, Alibaba dominates the e-commerce market in the world’s second biggest economy. The company’s Taobao service has 800 million product listings from 8 million sellers. About 80 percent of all Chinese e-commerce transactions go through Alibaba.

The company also has strong U.S. ties. Yahoo owns a 22.6% stake in Alibaba. The IPO is great news for Yahoo investors and Yahoo shares rallied on that report. The Alibaba IPO filing followed the debut of Weibo , Chinese version of Twitter, which raised $286 million in April.

In the past few months, Alibaba invested $215 million in Mountain View mobile messaging service TangoMe, pouring $250 million into San Francisco ride-sharing app Lyft and $206 million worth of investment into ShopRunner, a delivery service for online purchases.

Alibaba has dropped billions of dollars to acquire other Chinese companies as well, including a $1.2 billion purchase last week of 16.5% share in China’s Youku and Tudou, Chinese equivalent to YouTube and Netflix.

However, Alibaba faces the challenge of convincing investors it will be a good buy.

The biggest concern has to do with transparency. People have suspicions about the way Chinese companies are operating, and they want know specific numbers and details about Alibaba’s books.

Analysts estimate the company could be worth $136 billion to $245 billion when it started to sell stocks, according to Wall Street Journal.

One key concern is where Alibaba’s core revenue growth is coming from and the company’s system for recording and reporting sales.

 

 

 

 

Q1 home sales in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen dropped more than 40% this year from the same quarter in 2013.

Real estate is a huge driver of China’s GDP growth.Housing market contributes 33% of fixed-asset investment, equivalent of 16% of GDP. The decade-long housing boom has so far defied the bubble warnings, which began as far back as in 2007.

Is China’s housing bubble real? That depends on whether China’s surging housing prices are backed by speculation or a real lack of supply.

China has more than 160 cities with more than one million people and many hundreds the size of San Francisco.China added 787 million square meters of new residential floor space in 2013. There has been excessive buildout—that means the current supply is sufficient.

However, before 2000, affordable properties were in massive construction to be sold to poor and middle-class families. Those flats are small and often share kitchens or bathrooms with the entire floor. And these houses are mainly in downtown, thus convenient for people to commute. Families, counting on them to save money for fancier and bigger flats, find them unable to sell and waiting to be bought out by developers when the land parcel sells. At the end of 2011, around 47% of China’s overall housing is such “crappy legacy housing.” Experts estimated only around one-third of home owners are living in “commodity houses”—while others hang on social or legacy housing. That means China might actually have a housing shortage.

What’s more, China’s household registration system limits who can buy property where, distorting potential demand and supply balance.

However, some argue that with building around 13.4% more floorspace each year, China finally has too much housing. For each person that moves to a city this year, developers will build around 121 square meters of new flooring. That number was 113 last year.

People, especially those in first-tier cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, buy property in the big metropolises as investments.

But the first-tier cities’ account for only 5% of housing under construction and sales—and only 8% of overall housing investment in 2013. This is comparable to US property bubble burst when property prices did not collapse in New York, but instead in places like Orlando and Las Vegas. In China, the true risks property market might actually lie in third- and fourth-tier cities.

Tens of thousands of people protested outside Taiwan’s Presidential Office Building in downtown Taipei last month, stepping up pressure on President Ma Ying-jeou to re-examine a trade deal with Beijing.

At the heart of the protests is the Cross-Strait Service in Trade Agreement signed between Taipei and Beijing last year. The deal, according to the Taiwan government, will help boost the economy by opening service sectors such as banking, health care and food catering to companies across the Taiwan Strait.

So what are the grievances? The most widely held complaint of the protesters is that the agreement passed with little public review. Protesters accused the government of “black box” and have dubbed campaign the Sunflower Movement, meaning sunlight and transparency.

The protesters were also worried China will exert more control over Taiwan’s economy and leave small- to medium-size enterprises in Taiwan struggling to compete. They feared that China’s efforts to absorb the island into its economy are a malicious scheme for ultimately reunifying straits. The main opposition party, the Democratic Progress Party, has been relentlessly against any moves to go closer to its giant neighbor even if on trivial things like allowing more tourists to visit Taiwan.

Resistance to the deal in Taiwan indicated that the Mainland’s strategy of trying to win Taiwan’s heart economically through closer economic ties may not be working.

After the Communist forces led by Mao Zedong won China’s civil war in 1949, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with his defeated Kuomintang armies. For decades, hostilities between the Kuomintang government in Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party led to a policy on the Taiwan side of “no contact, no compromise and no negotiation.”

China has long claimed Taiwan as a part of its territory, It fired missiles over the Taiwan Strait in 1995 and 1996 in response to President Lee Teng-hui’s call for Taiwanese identity. During the 2000-2008 reign of Chen Shui-bian, China frequently condemned him of is his Taiwan independence inclination. In 2005, China passed an anti-secession law that allowed the use of force in the event of a formal declaration of Taiwan’s independence.

After Mr. Ma took presidency in 2008, the two sides began signing a range of economic agreements including the landmark Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in 2010. ECFA cuts tariffs on 539 Taiwanese exports to China and 267 Chinese products entering Taiwan. Two-way trade doubled since 2008, reaching $197 billion last year.

Beijing tried to use tariff cuts on half as many products from Taiwan to Mainland to appease opponents who warned that Taiwan will be flooded by cheap Chinese products with small businesses squeezed and jobs stolen.

The Taiwanese government has said it believes the ECFA will help create 260,000 jobs and boost economic growth by as much as 1.7%.

Taiwan’s economy depends on trade, and China is its biggest export market and source of a huge trade surplus. China is central to the supply chains of Taiwanese manufacturers, and the destination to 80 percent of Taiwanese foreign direct investment.

Today, 118 airline flights fly back and forth between Taiwan and 54 cities in China per day, mainly packed with Taiwanese businesspeople mainland tourists. Seven years ago, such flights were banned.

There are also over one million Taiwanese working and living in China.

One of the biggest Taiwanese companies, Foxconn Technology, which assembles Apple products, employs hundreds of thousands of workers in Mainland China.

The service agreement centered in this event would open 80 Chinese industries to investment from Taiwan, while Taiwan’s side would open 64. In addition, Taiwan reserves the right to apply many barriers and restrictions. Mr. Ma said that was a sign that China was sacrificing more while Taiwan will be benefitted more in the deal.  He argued the deal would create 12,000 jobs and boost service exports by $394 million, nearly a quarter of cross-Strait trade last year.

Ma said, Taiwan, as one member of the “the Four Asian Tigers ”, has already lagged behind regional rivals like South Korea and Singapore and he warned that failing to pass the pack will impede Taiwan to enter other economic agreements, like the American-led Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Chen Deming, China’s chief negotiator in the trade talks with Taiwan, told Xinhua News Agency that he would be “deeply regretful” if the pact isn’t passed in Taiwan. He cited the huge complementarity of the two sides economies as the reason why the deal could be tremendously beneficial to Taiwan’s economy.

Merril Lynch forcasts Taiwan’s economy will grow at 2.9% if the bill passed and 2.55 of it’s delayed into next year.

Many experts argued that with China’s rapid rising in today’s world and Taiwan’s sluggish economy, It is increasingly harder for Taiwan to pay the price of ignoring its giant neighbor.

“The bottom line is that if the same deal was between Taiwan and pretty much any other country in the world it wouldn’t be a problem,” Jonathan Sullivan, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham’s School of Contemporary Chinese Studies told New York Times. “But Taiwan’s relationship with China is unlike any other in the world. And depending on who you talk to, China is Taiwan’s only way to peace and prosperity or an existential threat.”

“Taiwan’s service industry accounts for more than 60 percent of its GDP. However, Taiwan manufacturers got more opportunities in Mainland than service providers. That does not reflect Taiwan economy’s real balance,” said Xianghong Hua, an economic professor at the University of International Business and Economics. “ Then this pact is a perfect opportunity for Taiwan to adjust its investment structure in China, which is definitely mutually beneficial.”

In essence, Beijing, known as a tough negotionator, offered Taiwan a special deal that other countries would kill to get.

Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, a government think tank, said the agreement could add 12,000 jobs to Taiwan’s services industry, mainly in retail and storage sectors. It could also add around 0.025-0.034 percentage point to Taiwan’s gross domestic product.

In response to people’s ingrained anxiety about closer economic integration with Beijing, Taiwan’s government said it would earmark nearly US$3 billion to help small and medium enterprises survive or transform themselves against rising competition from across the strait

“Due to globalization and Taiwan’s maturing market, those SMEs are facing a tougher business environment whether there is a services trade pact with China or not. But they just don’t know how they will be assisted, of course they are against the deal,” Mr. Luo, an economist at Fubon Financial Holding told Bloomberg.

Some experts believe The Trade in Services Agreement will not benefit Taiwan’s services exports.

About 2.4 million of its 6 million workers are employed in Taiwan’s 1 million shops and services. Taiwan’s domestic services sector including local retail, printing, e-commerce, logistics, mass transport is in vibrant competition while China’s services sector is far more centralized, and subject to government regulations.

In addition, Taiwanese businesses already have far more access to China’s services sectors than any other foreign investors. However, Taiwanese investors in Mainland do not enjoy the same shields from arbitrary law enforcement, regulations and contract disputes as investors from other countries, which have embassies. Chinese investors, however, in Taiwan’s services industry can be operated in a modern democracy with a rule of law.

Taiwan’s banking institutions are too small and too competitive among themselves to have any structural impact in China’s financial services market. On the other hand, China’s financial institutions are all centrally controlled and have much more capital. The agreement gives Chinese banks and institutions up to 20 percent ownership in Taiwan counterparts, which will exert am effective control. But it is almost impossible for an y Taiwan  institution to have the same impact in China’s banking system.

Under the pact, investment threshold of $200,000 allows the investor to bring 21 new immigrants from China— three employees and up to seven family members per worker. That further inflamed Taiwan’s concern about the scenario of flocks of immigrants and small businesses being swamped.

Like the United States, Taiwan has seen thousands of good jobs move offshore, most of them to China. University graduates in particular complain that there aren’t enough decent jobs for them.

“They are stealing our jobs,” said Godwin Wang, an assistant vice president at Farglory Free Trade Zone Co., which provides air cargo and other services to importers and exporters. Farglory’s warehouse space by the airport is half full, he told Wall Street Journal days before the students took to the streets. “We are suffocating.”

However, China is not solely responsible for all of Taiwan’s economic predicaments. Taiwan has been hit hard by weak global demand since the Great Recession, due to the slow recovery in the United States and other large markets.

Many experts pointed out that Taiwan is hindered by structural weaknesses. Among them are excessive government regulation, the world’s lowest birth and a pattern of developing small businesses instead of giant corporations without giving them enough help.

Taiwan’s economic development paled in face of some of its faster-growing neighbors, especially South Korea.

In recent years, with the rise of global powerhouse companies such as Samsung and Hyundai, Korea’s economy has been far more dynamic, leaving many Taiwanese to wonder where they have gone wrong.

Nonetheless, many Taiwanese see China as the biggest, most immediate issue.

A poll conducted on March 20th-21st by TVBS found that nearly half of respondents supported the students’ action and opposed the trade pact. Only a fifth were in favor of the deal.

However, a free trade agreement is something unavoidable between Mainland China and Taiwan. Trade with mainland China is vital to Taiwan’s future economic development and future integration into the global economy. It is not possible for Taiwan to compete in the world without signing a lot of FTAs (free trade agreements), including (with) mainland China.

 

 

References:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11275274

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/world/asia/concession-offered-taiwan-group-to-end-protest-of-china-trade-pact.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-10/taiwan-students-to-end-24-day-occupation-of-legislature-today.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11275274

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303978304579470552484527172

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/1/tkacik-taiwan-struggles-in-chinas-grip/?page=all

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/3/24/china/why-taiwanese-protestors-are-wrong-china-trade-pact

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21599807-students-occupy-taiwans-legislature-protest-against-free-trade-pact-china-manning

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/opinion/taiwan-and-china-edge-ever-closer.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/apr/04/business/la-fi-taiwan-economy-20140405

http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/to-counter-beijing-japan-moves-closer-to-taiwan/

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/15/what-s-next-for-chinataiwanrelations.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/11/us-china-taiwan-idUSBREA1A0EP20140211

http://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2014/05/04/a-free-trade-agreement-is-something-unavoidable-between-mainland-china-and-taiwan/

 

 

Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, debuted on the Nasdaq exchange on April 17 with a 19.1 percent jump, the eighth-best debut for a U.S. listed tech stock this year.

Weibo shares rose from the subscription price of $17 to as high as $24.28. The company sought to raise $380 million by selling 20 million shares for as much as $19 each. But underwriters could only find demand for 16.8 million shares at $17, generating $287 million for the company.

Weibo, launched in August 2009, is China’s largest social media platform with 144 million active monthly users.

Though it remains unprofitable, losing $38 million last year and another $47 million in the first quarter of this year, its revenues jumped to nearly $68 million for the three months.

The Shanghai-based Weibo was missioned with a fundamental challenge: progressing from a microblogging phenomenon in China to an important member of the international social media industry.

As Weibo celebrates Wall Streets’ s welcoming waters for it, it’s always at conflicts with censors at home, putting in doubt whether the firm known as the “Twitter of China” may eventually be dismantled by government interference.

A series of detentions of influential online commentators may have hurt Weibo’s user numbers. A study released in this January by Britain’s Telegraph newspaper and East China Normal University in Shanghai showed that the number of Weibo posts have fallen 70 percent since its peak in 2012, after the government required users’ real names before posting content.

Chinese government stipulated a series of policies – requiring real names on social media in early 2012 and introducing new laws prohibiting “rumor-mongering” last September – after the Facebook- and Twitter-fueled Arab Spring protests swept through the Middle East.

However, the opportunity for Weibo remains tremendous with China’s more than 600 million Internet users. But people argued that the harsh online censorship in China could hurt Weibo’s healthy growth, especially as it competes against Wechat— the mobile messaging app launched by rival Tencent Holdings Ltd that has became increasingly  popular in part because it is private by nature.

The China Internet Network Information Center, a state-run agency tracking Internet statistics, said in its annual report released in January that while growth in Weibo dropped 9 per cent in 2013, mobile messaging services witnessed explosive growth, with apps such as WeChat adding more than 78 million new users.

 

 

For the past few decades, some of the brightest and best of young Chinese left the country to seek educational and entrepreneurial opportunities overseas. Often, they went to the most prestigious universities in United States, Europe and Canada. Then, they took top-tier jobs at multi-national companies and research institutes.

But now they’re coming home

Because there is more money in China. Growth rates are breathtaking. And new businesses find opportunities and capital more easily.

With its 8 percent annual growth rate, the Chinese economy has become the world’s second largest after the United States. After the financial crisis in 2008, while other major world economies were plagued by the dragging recession, China’s economy remained robust, hence spurring the tide of of some Chinese migrants returning.

The beginning of the twenty-first century witnessed soaring numbers of overseas Chinese migrating back home. According to statistics from the China’s Ministry of Education, in 2012 alone, more than 272,900 overseas students came back, up by almost 50 percent from the year prior.

Returning students have increased by an average of 36% per year over the past 5 years, pushing the total number of the five-year period to more than 800,000. That dwarfed the entirety of all returnees back to China for the 30-year period from 1978 to 2008.

The returning trend shows no sign of mitigating, as a poll conducted in this January by a research team from Nankai University shows. The polls indicated that less than 10% (the lowest number in the past decade) of the nearly 2,000 undergraduate students surveyed had plans to immigrate to other nations after they finish their study abroad.

Another survey conducted by the Chinese international education service provider EIC in 2013 echoed the similar shift. It said 22 percent of returned overseas Chinese students thought they would have better prospects finding a good job in their “home country”.

“China’s high-speed economic growth in past years has motivated overseas students to come back and to look for job opportunities,” Liu Yuan, general manager of EIC’s Shanghai branch told People’s Daily. “At the same time, it demonstrates the difficulty overseas Chinese students have in finding jobs in other countries.”

About half of the former overseas Chinese students polled cited the uncertain economic situation as the biggest obstacle to finding employment overseas.

The tremendous rise in returning students since 2008 coincides with the government rolling out a wide-ranging series of initiatives and incentives aimed at appealing to highly educated citizens. Those benefits include better opportunity for career development, favorable tax rates, housing, more research project opportunities, and government awards.

The growth in Chinese students pursuing studies in the US has been exponential during the past decade: China sent 60,000 students to the US in 2000, almost all graduate students sponsored by the government; in 2012, 194,000 Chinese students went to the US, with most of the growth from self-funded undergraduate students.

Overall, China started to lead all nations in sending students to US universities since 2008. Today, it sends five times more students (158,000 last year) to US institutions than the second-largest source India, according to US State Department statistics. The Chinese government thus showed more eagerness to lure those talents back to help spur its economy.

In 2010, the issue of “trade deficit of talent” was taken over by the Coordination Group on Specialists of the Communist Party of China. The goal of this group is to coordinate the myriad efforts in place to bring back talent to China.

For more than two decades now, China has had programs to encourage talent to move back to the country. Between 1990 and 2010, the Ministry of Education spent close to $98 million in seed funding for about 20,000 returnees.

A program by the Chinese Academy of Science, launched in 1994, offers as much as $328,500 for research to returnees. In almost 20 years, almost 1,600 professionals have taken advantage of the plan.

In 2008, China launched the Thousand Talents plan, through which the government tries to convince overseas Chinese to return. The plan offers top scientists and entrepreneurs as much as $150,000 in cash, office and laboratory space, housing allowances and school entry for children. The aim of the program was to attract 2,000 academics and entrepreneurs during the course of a decade. More than 3,300 came back.

Another program, the Medium- and Long-Term Talent Development Plan (2010-2020) aims to attract another 2,000 specialists in IT, biotechnology, aerospace, environmental protection, agricultural technology and transportation.

Wei Wang, who is now working at Hubei Institute for Food and Drug Control, took part in the Thousand Talents plan back in 2008 immediately after graduating from Michigan State University.

“It was indeed a hard time for me to choose back then. I originally planned to work in a US medicine company for at least a couple of years after graduation. But the US economy at that time was not in a good shape. And by comparison the domestic talent policy in my home country was just way too appealing. Thus I changed my mind,” said Wang.

But it is hard to tell how effective these programs truly are at bringing back top talent. There have been criticisms of poor management, particularly in city level programs. At times, “returnees” who have taken advantage of programs were already back in China but were enrolled to shore up the numbers. At other times, the people offered spots in these programs did not necessarily fit the bill.

Quality can be an issue. The lower end of the talent spectrum tends to swell the ranks of the returnees. Weak students, often supported by their parents after they return to China, return in droves. The best and the brightest are often hired in the US and Europe; luring these candidates back is expensive.

In a 2008 survey, Duke University in the US found that half of 637 returnees polled had five years or less of experience in the US. They were hardly top executives.

As more and more overseas students are returning back to China, there is a major difference from previous generations who have made the same choice to go back. The previous trend was to come back to China to work at universities or research institutes. Nowadays, returnees are joining businesses or starting up their own enterprises off the ground. They might have been working abroad for several years and have seen the limitations of the foreign markets; they feel they can apply their own talent and experience to tap the greatest potential of the vast Chinese market.

Wang Mengqiu, 37, was born in Sichuan province and went to the US a decade ago to obtain a master’s degree in computer’s science at UCLA.

Until 2012, she worked at a Silicon Valley startup producing network routers. Once the bubble burst, she and her husband — a fellow “sea turtle” who used to work at IBM — picked up and flew back to China where they consider opportunities are more promising.

Now, Wang is now the Vice-President of Engineering at Baidu, Chinese version of Google, while her husband is embarking on a startup to create a Chinese equivalent of Pinterest.

“I don’t think I would get the same opportunities in US, frankly,” Wang told Global Post. “Just last month, I went back to Silicon Valley to visit some friends. What I found out is they are doing the same things they were doing ten years ago. Nothing has changed. They are smart people, but they cannot get enough opportunities in the US.”

 

Reference:

How China’s “Sea Turtles” Will Crush US Economy.

More Chinese Students Return to Find Work After Studying Abroad.

China’s Return Migration And Its Impact On Home Development.

Why Are Overseas Chinese Students Not Returning To China.

Plight Of The Sea Turtles.

More Chinese Students Want A US Education, But Fewer Stay For A Job.

Chinese Immigration And The Chinese In United States.

Number Of Returning Chinese Students Up 38%.

Returning To Mexico: Why Mexican Immigrants Are Leaving The US.

Chinese Students Studying Abroad Bringing Change To China…But What Kind?

History Of Chinese Immigration To US.

Why The Chinese Are Flocking To US Colleges?

More Students Back From Abroad.

3000 RMB? Returning Overseas Chinese Students Coming Back to Paltry Salaries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the past decades, some of the brightest and best of young Chinese left the country to seek educational and entrepreneurial opportunities overseas. Often, they went to the most privileged universities in United States, Europe and Canada. Then, they took top-tier jobs at multi-national companies and research institutes.

But now they’re coming home

Because there is more money in China. Growth rates are breathtaking. And new businesses find opportunities and capital more easily.

With its 8 percent annual growth rate, the Chinese economy has become the world’s second largest after the United States. After the financial crisis in 2008, while other major world economies were plagued by the dragging recession, China’s economy remained robust, hence spurring the tide of of some Chinese migrants returning.

The beginning of the twenty-first century witnessed soaring numbers of overseas Chinese migrating back home. According to statistics from the China’s Ministry of Education, from 2009 to 2011, 429,300 students who had studied abroad returned to their home country. In 2012 alone, more than 272,900 overseas students came back, up by 46.57 percent from the year prior.

Returning students have increased by an average of 36% per year over the past 5 years, pushing the total to more than 800,000. That dwarfed the entirety of all returnees back to China for the 30-year period from 1978 to 2008.

The returning trend shows no sign of mitigating, as a poll conducted in this January by a research team from Nankai University shows. The polls indicated that less than 10% of the nearly 2,000 undergraduate students surveyed had plans to immigrate to other nations after they finish their study abroad.

As the number of Chinese students at US universities surged to 158,000 last year, the number of “sea turtles” (or haigui, the Mandarin term for overseas-educated Chinese who come home from abroad) has also surged in what is a reverse-brain-drain trend.

As America has drastically axed the number of working visas available to foreigners — from 195,000 a decade ago to roughly 65,000 now — more educated Chinese have left the US, taking their skills with them. Data from US-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, more than 80 percent of Chinese who returned said that there were more opportunities at home than in the US.

As more and more overseas students are returning back to China, one big difference from previous generations who have made the same choice: the previous trend was to come back to China to work at universities or research institutes; nowadays, returnees are joining businesses or starting up their own enterprises off the ground. They might have been working abroad for several years and have seen the limitations of the foreign markets; they feel they can apply their own talent and experience to tap the greatest potential of the vast Chinese market.

Wang Mengqiu, 37, who was born in Sichuan province and went to the US a decade ago to obtain a master’s degree in computer’s science at UCLA.

Until 2012, she worked at a Silicon Valley startup producing network routers. Once the bubble burst, she and her husband — a fellow “sea turtle” who used to work at IBM — picked up and flew back to China where they consider opportunities are more promising.

Now, Wang is now the Vice-President of Engineering at Baidu, Chinese version of Google, while her husband is embarking on a startup to create a Chinese equivalent of Pinterest.

“I don’t think I would get the same opportunities in US, frankly,” Wang told Global Post. “Just last month, I went back to Silicon Valley to visit some friends. What I found out is they are doing the same things they were doing ten years ago. Nothing has changed. They are smart people, but they cannot get enough opportunities in the US.”

The tremendous rise in returning students since 2008 coincides with the government rolling out a wide-ranging series of initiatives and incentives aimed at appealing to highly educated citizens. Those benefits include better opportunity for career development, favorable tax rates, housing, more research project opportunities, and government awards.

One initiative, the Talent Development Plan (2010-20) launched June 2010, offers favourable policies on tax, housing and children and spouse resettlement for high-end talents willing to return to work in China.

China has also established more than 160 industrial parks encompassing more than 8,000 businesses to provide approximately more than 20,000 jobs for returnees.

The central government programmes for attracting overseas talents also include the 2008 Thousand Talents Programme; 2010 Thousand Young Talents Programme; 2011 Thousand Foreign Experts Programme; 2011 Special Talent Zone and the 2012 Ten Thousand Talent Plan. In line with the central government’s talent attracting strategy, by August 2012, 35 industries in 31 provinces and municipalities in China initiated a total of 2,778 local talent plans, such as the Beijing Haiju Programme, Jiangsu Seagull Programme and the Guangdong Pearl River Talent Plan. Under these programmes, more than 20,000 high-level overseas talents have been recruited.

However, the growth in Chinese students pursuing studies in the US has been exponential during the past decade: China sent 60,000 students to the US in 2000, almost all graduate students sponsored by the government; in 2012, 194,000 Chinese students went to the US, with most of the growth stem from increase of self-funded undergraduate students.

Overall, China started to lead all nations in sending students to US universities since 2008. Today, it sends five times more students to US institutions than the second-largest source, according to US State Department statistics.

Amid the upward trend in the number of Chinese returning, it does not ring true for the highly talented students who have obtained doctorate degrees, who are performing research or who have high-level work skills. According to a report released by the Central Chinese Human Resources Work Coordination, China is losing more highly talented people than any other country, and about 87% of those not returning are from science and engineering backgrounds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry’s Berries Gean Family Farm, an organic fresh produce grower, plans to increase some of its products’ prices in next month if the record-breaking severe drought facing California prolongs this year.

Jennifer Gean, the owner the 27-year-old organic produce firm, projected a one-dollar-per-three-packs uptick next month for most of the organic berries her farm produces because the water price has gone up significantly for the past year resulting from the third straight year with below normal rainfall in California.

“As a berry specialty grower, we are very much depending on the water supply. Last year, it might probably be OK, but if the dry situation continues, we have to start very worrying, “ said Gean.

In effect, the firm has increased its products’ prices from time to time in the past few years.

“Last year, it went up a dollar because of related-overheads increase like fuels and supplies. Another thing is that we pay a much competitive rate to our employees. They are very well trained and hard-working. That does add to our overheads as well,” said Gean.

But according to Gean, the multiple price increases do not affect the farm’s revenue even though in financially difficult times because of its good reputation, combined with people’s perpetual willingness to eat healthy.

“Despite the sluggish economy in recent years when people have to be a little frugal out of necessity, they are still willing to pay it because of the quality. A good thing for us is we are in food industry and we are doing fresh produce. It the last thing people will save money on. We have royal customers to support us regardless of we having to increase the price and they continue to shop. It is a long-term investment to health,” said Gean.

Despite the deepening drought plaguing California, not every organic farm has experienced price fluctuation resulting from severe water shortage. Organic Santa Babara Pistachio Company is one of them.

Mary Mills, a worker at the farm, said the prices of the companies’ pistachio are pretty much stable in the past two years.

“The water shortage does not affect pistachio because pistachio trees do not require much water as other trees. But most of my neighboring famers are struggling. They drill the wells and they have to drill deeper and deeper, and they have to invest a lot of money on that. Then they will have to increase the price to make up for the investment,” said Mills.

Compared with economic cyclical shifts, many farmers say, their business is far more dependent on weather factors. Many of them rather use their own properties than taking out loans from the bank except in financial woes.

“We take our small business loans and things like that. We will have to plant out strawberry every year and new plants are big investment. If we have a not good financial year, we will have to resort to borrowing. But for the most parts, we tried to save up enough thought the year. We make more during those peaks of the seasons in the summer and save for the winter,” said Gean.