Beijing's employment policy has undergone a major shift, with only 14.7 percent of the new employees at the Beijing-based Zhongguancun High-Tech Development Zone, or China's Silicon Valley, being permanent Beijing residents.
The figure, from a new survey, was disclosed by Wang Liping, director of the Human Resources Bureau of the Zhongguancun Administrative Office.
Beijing, with a population of more than 13 million and a huge number of migratory people from outside its area seeking entry every year, tends to enforce stricter control than other cities on granting residential permits, Wang said.
But to boost the high-tech zone's development, a much more flexible employment policy has been introduced since the zone's establishment in 1988.
Wang said that, in the recently ended employment survey, about 63.09 percent of new employees had been recruited although they did not have a permanent household registration in Beijing, or Beijing Hukou as it is often called in Chinese. This would have prevented them from taking up employment in the capital.
"People coming from other regions have indeed become a major productive force at the development zone," he said.
To attract more skilled employees, Wang said the authorities had designed a three-year program to train more workers, especially those specializing in software development, high-tech enterprise management, marketing and financing and those well versed in the rules of the World Trade Organization and international laws.
Meanwhile, they were also striving to provide more benefits for the workers at Zhongguancun such as housing and social security benefits.
China's existing household registration system, set up during the planned economy years to divide the country into two distinctive urban and rural spheres, has long been a barrier to the free movement of urban workers. Without a Beijing Hukou, it is hard to be employed and enjoy as much social welfare as urban citizens.
(Xinhua New Agency January 7, 2003)
