In contrast to the job fair crush in Zhengzhou, this is the situation in Guangzhou, and presumably the whole Pearl River Delta, according to the SCMP yesterday:

GUANGDONG - Businesses in Guangzhou raised salary levels to attract labourers at a job fair on Saturday, the Guangzhou Daily reports. About 4,000 job seekers attended the event which boasted more than 7,000 vacancies. Some firms had raised basic wages by 30 per cent to attract skilled workers.

I could be wrong but I imagine the job fair in Guangzhou was for factory workers. Skilled factory workers are being lured away from the PRD right now. An example in the SCMP recently was a furniture factory in Shijiazhuang offering 2000 RMB, a comparatively high monthly wage, for skilled hands.

Presumably the Zhengzhou fair was more for office work. To use a cliche, Chinese people seem to view office work as offering more "face". Also there are practical concerns such as workplace safety and the opportunity for promotion. Worth shoving for.

I think let aside the sensationalization of the newspaper, what should be focused here is the real problem--inefficient hr management scheme in China, which does not only include a conprehensive database of talents for employers to easily search for and an established recruiment procedure, but also an interactive and tuitive effort between the supply and demand. In other words, this society needs to understand better about what types of talents it wants and how to search, measure, select and further develope these talents.

I think some statistics can tell better than the picture. China is in a severe lack of talents at this moment, and it still prefers home-grown talents than overseas. So the problem is how to brige this demand and supply. Given that the labor market is still restricted under region division, and lack of transparency, which indicates a huge untouched HR market to caltivate. If you also have some insights on this issue, I'm looking forward to carrying on the discussion.