"When I hit the big time, I will buy a BMW7 series car as my marriage dowry," said sparkling 22-year-old Jian Jingtao." I'll give it to my fiance to show him how much I love him."
In China, the cheapest BMW7 series model costs nearly 1 million yuan (133,000 U.S. dollars) while the average annual income for urban residents, nationwide, was only 12,000 yuan (1,600 U.S. dollars) in 2006.
Jian, a civil servant in the southwestern province of Sichuan, makes about 1,200 yuan (160 U.S. dollars) a month, and she also works as a part-time weatherwoman in a TV station in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, an impoverished area of the province, where most people haven't even heard of BMW. The part-time job doesn't bring her much money.
Then, how can she possibly realize her dream? Well, instead of counting on her part-time job, she has other ideas.
"I'm taking the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) test and I've passed Level II," says Jian, her eyes shining with hope. "Just one step away from the best financial institutions!"
She believed getting a job in such institutions would mean she is one step closer to her dream car.
Official data suggested that staff workers in China's well-known financial institutions are making 15,000 yuan (2,000 U.S. dollars) a month and more. And jobs in the financial sector have being taking the lead, driven by the basic principle of a market economy's supply and demand.
Around 45 million people will join the labor force in the next five years in China, but many of them will have to take jobs as laborers and construction workers and make just 800 yuan (107 U.S. dollars) a month.
When lecturing in China's leading Tsinghua University, China Construction Bank (CCB) Chairman Guo Shuqing testified that the most troubling problem facing his bank in its "go overseas" strategy is a shortage of talented professionals.
CCB, one of China's four biggest commercial banks, wants to set up branches in New York and London, Guo told the students, adding that the bank is "hungry for people specialized in financial accounting, securities analysis, portfolio management, interest rate pricing and foreign exchange pricing".
China, the world's fastest-growing economy with an annual GDP growth of almost 10 percent for the last 10 years, has long been considered the world's factory, producing about 75 percent of the world's home appliances for example. (more)
Source: Xinhua
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