Early last year, during the depth of the financial crisis, I had the opportunity to do market research in China for a major pharma firm. At the time, even highly employable R&D scientists and marketers were worried about the coming crisis. Conventional wisdom was, “when the developed world sneezes, the developing world catches a cold.”

Not so much this time. More like a sniffle. Though China’s economy has suffered—who can forget the breathtaking fleet of empty container ships sitting idle off the Singapore coast because consumers in developed markets had stopped buying—the word on the street is different.

Today, in the middle of economic winter throughout the rest of the world, in China, spring has come and gone and it looks like it’s going to be a long, hot summer. While the U.S. struggles to shift from panic to growth, China’s government is trying to cool their economy and put the breaks on runaway expansion. While the rest of the world is trying to find the jobs it lost, China saw the employment market start to turn in June of 2009. Now, China finds itself trying to hold on to the tail of a tiger.

What does that mean for the talent market? Is there a jobs glut? A war for talent?

I can’t wait to find out.