A Chinese employee at Xiaomi's Mi Home in Shanghai Photo: IC

Chinese tech giants, such as Xiaomi and ByteDance, are busy recruiting talent amid ring tech competition with the US, in a bid to gain an advantage when Washington is moving to strangle Chinese tech giants through administrative weapons.

Lei Jun, the founder of Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi, said on Thursday that the company will recruit 5,000 engineers next year, and further increase research and development (R&D) investment.

He said that Xiaomi will focus on "breakthroughs in core technology" in key technical fields.

According to Lei, Xiaomi's R&D team has more than 10,000 people, and the key areas where staff are to be recruited include camera imaging technology, artificial intelligence, voice intelligent interaction technology, 5G and 6G communication standard technology, and big data and cloud service technology.

Xiaomi is not alone. Chinese internet company ByteDance, the parent of short-video platform TikTok, which has been in the spotlight amid tech disputes with the US, said it plans to offer another 10,000 jobs before the end of the year, and the total staff in the group could exceed 100,000.

The new jobs are mainly concentrated in emerging businesses such as education, games and e-commerce. Three years ago, the team had only a bit more than 4,000 people.

High-tech companies have achieved fast development in spite of the epidemic, and what they are seeking now is talent for cutting-edge technology, and this could also be the answer for the future, Liu Dingding, an independent tech analyst, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

He added that the hiring wave reflects a consensus in China that technology is a weapon against the US' technology hegemony.

China's top leadership has frequently called for homegrown innovation, and vowed that "key and core technologies must be firmly held in our hands," and stressed the importance of innovation as the country has entered a crucial and challenging stage of development.

Led by 5G and telecom equipment shares, China's A-share market rallied on Thursday, with all three major stock indexes gaining significantly, as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gained more votes toward winning the US presidency.

Stock prices of ZTE rose by daily ceiling of 10-percent on Thursday. Hopes for Biden to win the presidency have prevailed this week, underpinning a rally in the third-generation semiconductor sector.

Big US tech firms including Apple and Amazon have also drawn optimism from Biden's lead.

Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Chinese tech giant Huawei, said recently that the number of new graduates to be recruited next year will expand to at least 8,000, and he noted that "those who come in must be outstanding."

No matter whether for survival, or development, the key is in talent, Ren said, as he has stressed several times before, noting that the firm will hire talent from China and abroad.

The next two years will be the most critical and also the most difficult years for Huawei to seek survival and explore further development, Ren said, noting that the company will not only maintain its normal budget in R&D, but will also newly invest billions of dollars into key technology breakthroughs.


Newspaper headline: Chinese tech giants seek talent amid tech competition