In a milestone move, a recruitment campaign by six of China's biggest State-owned enterprises (SOEs) has attracted 463 applicants from home and abroad.

It is the largest recruiting drive ever by the government body in charge of supervising SOEs' assets.

About 28 per cent of the applicants have worked or studied overseas, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).

The figure includes 17 foreigners from a dozen countries such as the United States and Canada.

SASAC, which directly supervises the 191 biggest SOEs in China, launched the advertising campaign for its recruitment drive in mid-September as part of a managerial experiment.

The six enterprises, including China United Telecommunications Co Ltd and the State Development and Investment Corp, offered seven deputy general manager and chief accountant positions.

The deputy general manager posting for China General Technology (Group) Holding Ltd attracted the most applicants -- 121 people.

According to SASAC, an average of 20 people submitted applications for each of the jobs during the registration period from September 18 until October 5.

They also had diversified backgrounds -- 41 per cent were from large and medium-sized SOEs, some were working for private enterprises and joint ventures and others were employed by government institutions.

Among the six recruiters, only the China National Foreign Trade Transportation Corp did not require a person of Chinese nationality for its new chief accountant position.

However, all wanted the applicants to have either overseas experience or a good command of English or a knowledge of capital operations.

Yesterday, a SASAC spokesman said after the initial assessment, only about 100 of the applicants have been deemed qualified to take part in the examination process, which will be held on Sunday. The final interviews have been scheduled for November 8 and 9.

(China Daily October 23, 2003)