The number of foreign companies on the list of the top 50 preferred employers voted by Chinese college students has plunged to four from last year's 21.

ChinaHR.com, an on-line employment agency, Thursday released its report on college students' preference of employers, a poll of 200,000 students from more than 700 universities from November last year to May this year.

Among the top 50 best employers, 46 were local companies, including 33 state-owned enterprises. The four foreign companies in the top 50 were Microsoft, Google, Jardine Matheson, and Procter and Gamble.

Ouyang Hui, a supervisor with the human resource research center of ChinaHR, said local companies had made great headway in salaries, corporate culture and nurturing talents, challenging foreign companies in the fight for employees.

Ouyang also believed the global financial crisis prompted more students to favor government agencies, government-funded institutions and state-owned enterprises -- employers deemed to be offering "gold rice bowls," jobs they might never loose.

According to the survey, students valued a fair and transparent corporate mobility system over salary and welfare.

The survey also showed that 53.7 percent of respondents planned to run their own businesses in five years.