A recent survey in eastern China's Shanghai municipality showed only 1% of the interviewed would like to be blue-collars.

Xinhua News Agency reported the survey covered 4,000 local households. Most people preferred to seek posts in the government or at government-run institutions, monopolies, banks and insurance companies.

"The figure shows that Chinese people are still greatly affected by traditional values in job hunting. It also indicates there are problems in the government's work in human resources development," said Lin Zeyan, an official with the human resources department under the development research center of the State Council.

Lin Zeyan made the remarks at an awards ceremony for the China Human Resources Management Grand Awards on Saturday.

He said the universal shortage of talents at present affects a great amount of domestic enterprises that are also deficient in framing a rational structure of talent allocation and establishing an efficient mechanism to absorb talents.

The problems were discovered in an investigation recently carried out by Lin's department on the current status and policies of human resources development in China.

The investigation covered more than 10,000 domestic enterprises and 60,000 talents across the country.

They are the results of current institutional imperfections and are natural as the country's human resources development undergoes a transition period, he added.

"In developed countries such as the United States, 80% of the talented work for ordinary companies. However, in China, only 30% do," Lin Zeyan said. In China, the tertiary industry, government departments and finance businesses absorb the most talents, while mining and simple manufacturing industries the least.

Lin Zeyan suggested the government make it a strategic priority to help attract more talents to work for common enterprises.

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