Sunday, October 21, 2007
China Booms - demand for skilled professional
The Chinese economic juggernaut has been one of the miracles of the 21st century. Since its liberation in 1979, the Chinese economy has grown at annual rate of 10% and according to Chip Goodyear - ex-BHP Billiton CEO - is expected to continue at the same rate in the two decades.
Foreign investment is pouring in at an unprecedented rate, fueled by the multinational companies looking for higher return for their capital, and the wealth of the sixty million overseas Chinese eager to be part of the resurging motherland.
A rigorous and transparent business practice of the West is required to maximize the investments by the multinationals. To achieve this, overseas Chinese – those educated in the West but with an assumed capacity to integrate into China - were recruited and returned to China.
These professionals are often decendants of Chinese emigrants - those who left the poverty of their motherland after the Opium war robbed the Central Kingdom of its last vestige of pride and pluged the economy into disarray.
Despite their apparent cultural advantage over non-Chinese expatriates, some found the going tougher than they had anticipated. The degree of success was at best mixed as the following news headline illustrates:
Returning Chinese Find a Tough Market
They have skills and know the culture but face the same hurdles foreigners do. A hotelier learns that the hard way.
By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer, Los Angeles TimesMarch 5, 2006
The article described the frustration of a Chinese American who returned to China in 2003, which was best summed up below:
Since coming here three years ago to start a chain of budget hotels, the 41-year-old Chinese American says he has run into a maze of regulations and permits that, by comparison, makes California look like an easy place to do business. He says that he also has been pressured to pay bribes and that in one city his employees were beaten by thugs.
Instead of capitulating to work with the local system, he stood firm on his western business ethics and bided his time. The result had been a slower than planned growth of his business.His experience is quite typical of the returnees – or Returning Chinese – as I call them. In 1987, he left China to study in the US and stayed to work there after graduation. He had made his fortune in the US and wanted to return to his country of birth to help it grow.
Is his experience typical of the experience of the Chinese Returnee or 'Hai Qui' (sea turtle) as they are sometimes referred to?
I'd like to hear from those in a similar predicament as this Chinese hotelier.
Foreign investment is pouring in at an unprecedented rate, fueled by the multinational companies looking for higher return for their capital, and the wealth of the sixty million overseas Chinese eager to be part of the resurging motherland.
A rigorous and transparent business practice of the West is required to maximize the investments by the multinationals. To achieve this, overseas Chinese – those educated in the West but with an assumed capacity to integrate into China - were recruited and returned to China.
These professionals are often decendants of Chinese emigrants - those who left the poverty of their motherland after the Opium war robbed the Central Kingdom of its last vestige of pride and pluged the economy into disarray.
Despite their apparent cultural advantage over non-Chinese expatriates, some found the going tougher than they had anticipated. The degree of success was at best mixed as the following news headline illustrates:
Returning Chinese Find a Tough Market
They have skills and know the culture but face the same hurdles foreigners do. A hotelier learns that the hard way.
By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer, Los Angeles TimesMarch 5, 2006
The article described the frustration of a Chinese American who returned to China in 2003, which was best summed up below:
Since coming here three years ago to start a chain of budget hotels, the 41-year-old Chinese American says he has run into a maze of regulations and permits that, by comparison, makes California look like an easy place to do business. He says that he also has been pressured to pay bribes and that in one city his employees were beaten by thugs.
Instead of capitulating to work with the local system, he stood firm on his western business ethics and bided his time. The result had been a slower than planned growth of his business.His experience is quite typical of the returnees – or Returning Chinese – as I call them. In 1987, he left China to study in the US and stayed to work there after graduation. He had made his fortune in the US and wanted to return to his country of birth to help it grow.
Is his experience typical of the experience of the Chinese Returnee or 'Hai Qui' (sea turtle) as they are sometimes referred to?
I'd like to hear from those in a similar predicament as this Chinese hotelier.
Labels: Chinese Professionals, Chinese Returnee, Dilemma, Who is Chinese
# posted by ChineseReturnee @ 12:51 AM 
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