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China luring 'sea turtles' home

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-18 10:29

Financial professionals of Chinese heritage and Chinese people studying or working in the United States meet with recruiters for companies from Shanghai during a recruitment event in Queens, New York, December 13, 2008.  [Agencies]

Beijing unveiled over the weekend another round of stimulus measures including increasing money supply by 17 percent to boost lending and consumption. It comes on the heels of a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) package announced last month amid fears growth could fall below the 8 percent considered necessary to create enough jobs.

Indeed, so many sea turtles (hai gui in Mandarin) have returned home that the people of Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere have invented a new name for those returnees who cannot find a job: "seaweed" (hai dai).

But, while unemployment is rising in China, there are still opportunities at the top of the labor market, especially for those with foreign education and experience.

Zack Liu, who returned to China earlier this year after more than a decade on Wall Street, said he was impressed by the efforts made by Chinese fund firms to institutionalize and professionalize the industry.

Liu started his career in finance in 1996 at Bear Stearns after earning an MBA from Cornell and a PhD degree in physics from Florida State University. Over the past year, he has watched two of the three firms he worked for either collapse or merge with others as a result of the credit crunch.

"It's sad to watch all these big banks fail. Life is like a roller-coaster. I made the right decision at the right time to come back to China," Liu said by telephone from his new home in Shenzhen.

Patriotism is sometimes a factor, but economic interest is certainly a much more important consideration. Still, many "sea turtles" acknowledged that they're willing to accept lower pay if the job provides attractive career prospects.

Career International, a leading recruitment firm in Beijing, said there has been a jump in interest from Chinese employees on Wall Street. Their potential employers in China, according to the company, mostly offer a base pay in the range of $100,000 to $500,000.

"Before the crisis, we were receiving about five resumes per week on average. Now, it's two or three times of that," Jun Xu, director of the firm's financial services group, said by telephone from Beijing.

"We're also trying to help their family through the transition. Unlike us (who only have one child), many 'sea turtles' have two or three kids and some also need a bilingual daycare center."

Some in the United States, such as Ke Zhang, who works for a hedge fund after being laid off from Lehman Brothers earlier this year, are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

"The economy here is terrible," said the 27-year-old who holds a masters degree from Columbia University. "Gaining experience in the US is still very important. Besides, the employment situation in China is far from rosy either."

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