Beijing at a Glance

Working in Beijing

Chayong is home to Beijing's central business district and many foreign embassies.

Expats working in Beijing have become a rather common phenomenon over the past two decades. No wonder! Your chances of working in Beijing as an expat are excellent, as international companies are now flocking to China to tap this huge market. We tell you what to expect from working in Beijing!

Working in Beijing means working in China’s major post-industrial city. Nowadays, less than a third of all people working in Beijing are employed in industry, let alone agriculture. Over 70% of Beijing’s considerable annual GDP (gross domestic product) comes from the tertiary sector. The industrial activity in China’s capital is mainly limited to working in Beijing’s future growth industries.

Working in Beijing: Economic Developments

The Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area (BDA), located in suburban Yizhuang, attracts enterprises from the fields of materials engineering, IT, and pharmaceutics, such as the global health-care corporation Sanofi-Aventis. A lot of IT whizzes are currently also working in Beijing’s “Silicon Valley”, i.e. in Zhōngguāncūn Science Park in the university district of Heidian. If you are interested in working in Beijing’s branch of a high-tech or information-technology company such as Intel, Motorola, AMD, or Microsoft, you are likely to end up in a Zhōngguāncūn office, too.

Founded in 1988 and administrated by the Beijing Municipal Government, Zhōngguāncūn Science Park is the biggest and most successful of China’s over 50 national science parks. It is not only interesting for people working in Beijing’s IT industry, but also for Chinese locals and foreign experts focusing on intellectual property rights, venture capital, and economic development schemes for start-up businesses.

An increasing number of highly qualified employees working in Beijing’s “Silicon Valley”, especially in the area of research and development, are supposed to boost China’s competitiveness in patent affairs. Despite the many scientists working in Beijing and other Chinese university cities, only an annual 10-11 successful patent applications were filed per 10,000 Chinese researchers in 2000 – a low outcome in comparison with countries like Germany, Japan, and the US. However, since 2006, successful international patent applications from Chinese patent holders have been soaring, especially in the field of telecommunications. This shows that the efforts of researchers working in Beijing and other science parks are bearing fruit.

Working in Beijing: Finance

The combination of growing scientific and technological innovation, thanks to numerous specialists working in Beijing, and the financial importance of the capital create the perfect climate for Chinese entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Together the booming real estate market, finance is one of the most important employers for everyone working in Beijing’s tertiary sector.

Although the Chinese stock exchange is located in Shanghai and Shenzhen rather than Beijing, Beijing Financial Street is nonetheless referred to as China’s “Wall Street”. It hosts the nation’s three most important regulatory and supervisory institutions, the biggest three Chinese commercial banks, as well as hundreds of domestic and foreign financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan. No wonder that the city is home to 41 Fortune Global 500 companies, which employ a great number of people working in Beijing.