Guangdong province needs one million more workers, with a shortfall of about 200,000 in Shenzhen, 110,000 in Guangzhou and 80,000 in Foshan. A survey at Dongguan’s railway station after the Lunar New Year break found that about 1.2 million migrant workers had returned to the city, down nearly 20% on the number who returned last year. In one township, Humen, businesses say they are more than 100,000 workers short. Shenzhen has announced plans to hold 500 recruitment fairs between February 11 and the end of April to fill over 500,000 vacancies in the city. But about half the recruitment managers from a total of 100 enterprises at a job fair last week left before it ended because there were not enough job-seekers. Wu Wei, in charge of recruitment at a supermarket chain, said it had hoped to recruit 200 people but only found four. Another recruitment manager, from a shoe factory, said: “We could recruit 200 migrant workers a day before but now we have to spend at least a week or more to reach the same goal.” Electronics manufacturer Foxconn announced a basic monthly salary of CNY2,200 – CNY700 or 46% more than the city’s minimum wage – to fill 30,000 vacancies at its Shenzhen plant. In Xintang, Guangzhou, home to the world’s largest contract producers of jeans, more than 10 factories have shut down this month and more than two-thirds of the others have had to drop orders because of a lack of workers. With costs soaring on all fronts, the labour problem has worsened the plight of manufacturers already operating on thin profit margins. Dr Liu Kaiming, who researches labor issues at Shenzhen’s Institute of Contemporary Observation, warns that demographic trends will only increase the labor shortage as China’s family planning policy resulted in fewer births in the 1980s and 1990s.

China has pledged to provide equal access to public services for people living in urban areas without local residential permits. Policies and measures on essential public services, including employment assistance, compulsory education and occupational training, will no longer be based on whether one has a permanent residence permit or not. That means many of China’s millions of migrant workers may be formally accepted as urban residents. The country now has more than 200 million rural migrants working in cities. Shanghai had 22.21 million residents at the end of 2010 ― 14.12 million with residency and 8.29 million migrants who lived in the city for more than six months, as well as about 200,000 registered residents who lived elsewhere in the country. In county-level cities, anyone with a legal and stable job and residence, either rented or owned, can apply for a hukou – a permanent residence certificate. In medium-sized cities that are big enough to contain districts, a migrant must have worked there for more than three years with a stable residence before being able to apply. Current hukou practices remain in the four municipalities – Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing – and  other major cities, which the notice says must “continue to reasonably control population size”. China’s urban population surpassed the number of rural residents last year, according to official statistics.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has ordered that major shareholders, defined as those who hold more than 50% of a listed company’s issued stocks, must disclose every 1% increase in their stakes during an acquisition process. If the increase exceeds 2%, these shareholders must halt purchases for the rest of the day and the next as well. The previous disclosure rule covered changes of 5% or more. The new rule could reduce price volatility and enhance the fairness of trade, said a CSRC official. The Commission also said that shareholders with stakes of larger than 30% may only increase their holdings by an amount equivalent to less than 2% of the total volume in the previous 12 months. The changes will take effect on March 15. They signal tighter supervision of acquisitions involving listed companies, said Yang Hai, Chief Analyst at China Financial Online, a professional stock market information and services company. “Making a fortune overnight could become very hard for acquiring companies,” Yang said. “It could lead to more rational investments.” The CSRC also announced rules covering expert advisory committees for listed company acquisitions. Committee members have a duty to provide professional advice about legislation, accounting and asset appraisal for listed companies, the CSRC said. The experts, who can serve for up to three consecutive years at a time, are nominated by the CSRC. The maximum number of committee members is 35. CSRC Chairman Guo Shuqing called for the acceleration of market-oriented acquisitions of public companies through improved supervision, the China Daily reports.

Chinese companies are the most confident in Asia when considering the shape of their country’s economy, according to a survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. More than half of the Asian Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) interviewed said they expected revenues to grow this year, despite the uncertainties in the U.S. and Europe. On a scale of one to 10, CFOs in China scored 7.5 for confidence in their economy, higher than the average of 5.9 rated for Asia as a whole. The survey was conducted among 465 CFOs of companies generating more than USD500 million in Hong Kong, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia, in the fourth quarter of last year. In China, 86% of the CFOs considering M&As said they would do so at home, while the rest said they expected to take part in overseas acquisitions. More than 50% of the CFOs in Hong Kong and Singapore said they saw China, rather than their local market, as the top M&A destination. Matthew Koder, head of the bank’s Asia-Pacific global corporate and investment banking, said he was surprised CFOs from China did not express a stronger interest in buying up assets in Europe. Chinese CFOs were the most concerned group about cash flow, domestic competition and corporate taxes in the region.

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) is planning to set up an industrial park of 200,000 square meters in Dubai’s “Free Zone” as a logistics hub with production lines for engineering equipment to supply the company’s needs in the Middle East and North Africa. CNPC will use the park as an equipment store in the event of an emergency withdrawal from the Middle East and North Africa. The company suffered huge losses when it was forced to withdraw from Libya in 2011. A company source said the Dubai project was among a number of solutions designed to make CNPC more nimble and flexible when pulling out from turbulent regions. The Middle East and North Africa region is China’s major oil supplier. Sinochem Group also said it would set up a logistics center in Dubai. The upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa will not stop oil companies from continuing to invest heavily in those areas, because they have no other option as they seek to supply China’s huge demand for energy, said Andrew George, Managing Director of the London-based global risk adviser Marsh’s Energy Practice. CNPC holds a 37% share in Iraq’s biggest oilfield Rumaila, which has reserves of about 17 billion barrels, and a 50% stake in the Halfaya oilfield, which has an estimated total output of 70,000 barrels a day throughout 2012. The company has four upstream projects in Sudan and also participates in Syria’s Gbeiba oilfield. CNPC warned recently that political upheaval poses the biggest challenge for the overseas operations of Chinese oil companies, the China Daily reports.