CNBC reports that China will boost its job creation effort and promote entrepreneurship this year, a spokeswoman for the top state planner said on Sunday, under pressure to find work for millions of unemployed people and new college graduates. Meng Wei of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said China needs to create jobs for 9.7 million people registered as unemployed and 8.2 million new college graduates, as well as workers affected by industrial capacity cuts. China's urban-registered unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent last year and has remained generally stable despite slowing economic growth and the government forging ahead with plans to cut back industrial capacity. Many analysts say, however, that the official data is an unreliable indicator of employment conditions because it only measures employment in urban areas and does not take into account the millions of migrant workers who form the bedrock of China's labour force.

Financial Times reports that as Chinese companies spend billions of dollars buying overseas rivals and their technology, investors from the country are enticing China-born tech executives and scientists back home to launch start-ups of their own. Private and state-backed investors in China have set up venture capital funds to target executives and senior researchers at companies such as Google, Apple, Airbnb and Facebook, betting on the rapid development of the domestic tech sector to produce high returns on the investments. Other initiatives include a programme set up by China's Communist party that focuses on Chinese graduates and academics at foreign universities. "They recognise that the economy needs to shift to higher-quality production," said Shan Guangcun, a machine-learning specialist who recently received state funding to return to China from Germany. "So they need talent to come back from overseas, and they are willing to pay for it." A decade ago, most Chinese students went abroad to land a job at a well-known US company, and would have been reluctant to trade in that opportunity, said Cheng Yuyuan, an investment manager at K2VC, one of a growing number of prominent funds targeting overseas talent. However, the rapid expansion of Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent has driven corresponding growth in the wider market for internet technology, ecommerce and payments. That trend is encouraging more China-born tech experts residing in the US to return to the mainland.