China is facing an acute shortage of managers that is threatening the advance of its economy

Right across the country, State-owned enterprises, private companies and foreign multinationals, many of them European, desperately need more managers.

According to specialist management recruitment website lietou.com, there were 30,000 management vacancies in China the month after the recent Chinese New Year holiday.

The shortage is putting pressure on wages with managers seeking new jobs expecting up to a 40 percent increase in salary.

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China might have some of the top management schools in the world, including China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai and the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University but it is beyond their capacity to churn out the quantity of managers needed.

The management gap was also highlighted in global employment services company Manpower's 2010 talent shortage list.

In the top 10 labor needs, there was an acute shortage of senior management (ranked third) and sales managers (ranked tenth).

In Europe in the same survey, which interviewed 35,000 employers in 36 countries, management did not feature among any of the top 10 most urgent needs. The demand there was mainly for lower skilled operatives.

Lucy Qiao, general manager of Beijing-based Qeewoo executive search, which recruits managers for major companies such as Bayer, Alstom and Intel in China, says hiring management talent has become a real problem.

"The demand is huge, very very big, indeed. China simply can't supply enough managers," she says.

According to Qeewoo data, the average salary of a manager has increased by between 30 and 50 percent over the past five years, depending on the sector.

"One of the main problems we have when working for foreign companies is in finding managers with technical backgrounds who speak good English. People don't tend to have both."

A report in last November's McKinsey Quarterly, published by international management consultants McKinsey & Co, highlighted China needed 4 million middle managers, 30,000 senior managers and a further 100 managers capable of leading Global 500 companies if its corporate sector was to succeed.

"There is still a very long road for China to go to achieve such a goal," says Michael Wang, head of McKinsey & Co's Shanghai office.