Podcast: Story in the Story (9/20/2018 Thu.)
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From the People’s Daily app.

This is Story in the Story.

China's economy has moved from fast growth to enter a period of medium-high growth and high-quality development, along with an upgraded economic structure and innovation. The changes in the world's second largest economy are driving demand for skilled workers, entrepreneurs and talented people in various fields.

In February, Beijing released 20 new rules that were targeted at foreign professionals, aiming to improve recruitment and entry and exit procedures, as well as enhancing social security services.

Since 2015, Shanghai has launched 25 pilot visa policies to streamline and simplify the foreigner visa application process and to diversify the visa types to better fit the demand. Among the 25 pilot visa policies, four are directly linked to foreigners opening businesses in the city. 

Nationally, the State Immigration Administration was officially set up in April 2018 to improve China's immigration management and provide better services to foreigners.

According to the Expat Explorer 2017 Report published by HSBC, as one of the world's economic powerhouses, a move to China offers expats numerous career and income advantages.

Seven in ten expats in China said the country offers strong job prospects compared with only five in ten globally. Half of all expats interviewed in China said they have more chances to acquire new skills here than at home, and they earn significantly more than the average expat.

The number of foreign employees in China has increased at a staggering pace over the past decades. More than 900,000 foreigners were employed on the Chinese mainland in 2016, according to official data. In the 1980s, less than 10,000 foreign experts worked in the country every year.

Today’s Story in the Story will look at how foreigners see promising opportunities in China.   

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(Photo: VCG)

Nikita Ermakov, 25, a second-year Russian student at Peking University's Yenching Academy, said "China has become the new US, a new land of opportunities, the US is a country of immigrants, but it is already a developed country. With President Trump's new policies, the country has become stricter with visa and immigration regulations. China is still developing; it has a huge market." 

Ermakov spent four months on job hunting and many interviews before he finally got an offer from the HNA Group, a Chinese conglomerate on the Fortune 500 list. He is currently negotiating the offer with them, and hopefully, he will start the job after graduation. And he is only one of many foreign talents who choose to come to China for career development. 

Jurriaan Meyer, a 52-year-old man from the Netherlands, recently resigned from his post as Asia Pacific director at an international software company in Beijing to work as the general manager of Shandong SRCC Rail Transit Technology, a new Jinan-based company that does innovative propulsion systems for both the local and international markets. Meyer has been in China for over 15 years. 

"This project is part of the Belt and Road initiative and is supported by the governments of Shandong and the Netherlands," said Meyer. "Jinan wants to build a local rail industry, and SRCC will be one of the first companies to contribute to this plan with local assembly facilities. If we succeed, this project could truly be the crown of my career in China."

Tim Byrnes, a 40-year-old quantum physics researcher from Australia, is really starting to feel like he fits into China as he learns Chinese in the weekend with his wife and daughter.

After doing research in Japan for over a decade, Byrnes became an assistant professor of physics at Shanghai New York University (NYU Shanghai), a Sino-American higher education institute, in 2016.

He considers China a great place to do quantum technology research.

"Few other countries have a very advanced satellite with quantum capabilities like in China, and there is a lot of investment going into this area, especially from the private sector," he said.

Byrnes thinks of himself as fortunate. Since moving to Shanghai, he has obtained four grants, including two from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and one from the Shanghai government.

Byrnes said that without these grants, he would not be able to conduct experiments in collaboration with other researchers as that requires a significant amount of money.

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China is now second in HSBC's global rankings for career progression. (Photo: Global Times)

"In other countries, I would have to gradually work my way up," he said. "But now, I am already free to do new research and have my research team."

Madeleine, a 21-year-old woman from Indonesia, works as an event manager for jingjobs.com, a Beijing-based startup recruitment company. 

She came to Beijing in 2013 and studied marketing for four years at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). She also does public relations for Global Foundation of Young Entrepreneurs (GFYE) at UIBE. 

"Startup environments attract me a lot, as they are very challenging and give me the opportunity to learn every single day," said Madeleine. 

She started building her career here in 2016 by taking different internships and part-time jobs and has built her network from hundreds to thousands within a year. 

Madeleine thinks there is a bright future for bilingual professionals who speak Chinese and are passionate about China, its fast-economic growth, growing advanced technology and diversity.

"Nowadays, employers and companies are hiring younger professionals because they're known to be very tech savvy, entrepreneurial, adventurous and very talented overall," she said.

(Produced by Nancy Yan Xu, Terry Guanlin Li, Raymond Mendoza and Lance Crayon. Music by: bensound.com. Text from Global Times, China Daily, and China News Service.)