Going It Alone

By staff reporter LIU QIONG

Faced with a tight employment market, many college graduates are grabbing every chance to start their own business but very few know how to run their companies and get them on their feet.

The "green channel" for pioneering graduates in Xi'an.

    THIS Valentine's Day, Li Wenhao had a date – not a romantic one, though, with the Shanghai Administration of Industry and Commerce, for his business licence.

    Since early last year, Li, a Master's degree student in his last few months at the College of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, had been dreaming of the license printed with the name of his new company – Shanghai Quancai Network Technology.

    As a post-graduate student Li realized that it was not easy to set up a company, for which he not only needed minimum registered capital of tens of thousands of RMB, but also had to satisfy various rules and regulations. He had to put his plans on hold for nearly a year.

    "But when I heard about the 'zero down payment' for graduates wishing to make it on their own, I immediately picked up the phone," says Li. A freshly launched policy by the department of industry and commerce in Shanghai, "zero down payment" allows recent graduates who want to set up a limited liability company with registered capital of less than RMB 500,000 to pay the registered capital in installments over two years. A graduate can select "zero down payment" even to start a one-person, limited liability company. The scheme is also open to graduates from other parts of the country.

    Since this policy was implemented on February 9, the department has been receiving about 200 to 300 enquiries every day – via telephone, Internet or in person.

    On February 14, Li and seven other graduates were given their business permits covering a wide range of fields such as electronic technology, network technology, business consultation, arts and crafts collection, environmental protection and garment trade.

    As these graduates are mostly first-time businessmen, the department of industry and commerce has opened a "green channel" to simplify procedures and shorten the approval term for qualified applicants. Once the required documents are verified, permits are granted on the spot.

More Than Passion

    According to the department of education, about 6.5 million college graduates in China are on the lookout for jobs in 2009. Starting one's own company is a big confidence booster in this tight employment market.

    The idea of starting one's own business was not popular with Chinese graduates until the end of the last millennium. In May 1998, Qiu Hongyun from Tsinghua University, winner of the first "Challenge Cup" business plan competition for Chinese University Students, established a company with RMB 52.5 million risk funds, becoming the first Chinese graduate to start his own company.