One of my best friend in Shangahi, Amena Lee Schlaikjer, agreed to sit down with me a few weeks back to discuss her adventures in Shanghai.
It isn’t always easy, it isn’t always what it seems, you don’t always know everything.. and giving up is not an option.
Part 1: High Hopes for Shanghai
Part 2: The Highs and Lows of Entrepreneurial Life in Shanghai
Good friend, and old China Hand, Jay Boyle of Expat CFO sat down with me last Friday to discuss due diligence in China.
Having personally worked with Jay, what I always enjoyed from afar was the way he and his team can model out financial information. Whether it is a hotel in Ningbo, a start up retailer, or a portfolio firm of a top 5 PE firm, Jay and his team have racked up a lot of experience and stories that he was willing to share.
It is a topic that has been debated in many a bar, and on many a blog.
The quality of Chinese management.
The Institute of Leadership & Management has just release a very interesting report (PDF Here) on Western and Chinese managers. Specifically, they set out to see just how far back Chinese managers were relative to international perceptions, and they found some interesting things.
Throughout the report, what I find most interesting is just how different the west sees the east vs. what the east really represents. Perhaps it comes down to where the interviews take place, or perhaps they just reached out to the saltiest of old China hands, but as you will see in the 15 page report, there is a huge gap.
For my part, everything is a work in progress, various industries are bound to see different levels of talent, and with almost 7 years of working in China with a wide variety of Chinese staffers, analysts, managers, and others, I have come to understand that there are always going to be a percentage (large or small) that will fit into any bucket.
That goes for the foreign talent as well.
In the end, the authors have 4 suggestions for western managers:
Solid advice.
Read the report and tell us what you think.
Are the Chinese managers improving? Are they underestimated? Or is this just another study playing the statistical bell curve to its advantage?
6 months after I started reporting on the clampdown on visas, it is now a full blown party with major newspapers and blogs all reporting pretty thoroughly on the issue.
A new piece of information that I have to add at what I have already seen at the other sites, that no one else has covered, is that I recently was sitting in a clients office when their HR person gave us some bad news
Anyone born after 1983 can no longer get a Z visa.
What struck me about this was that if true this would represent the first real change in policy. After all, working on an F visa was always outside the rules, and even extending a Z visa to rep office employees was a poorly enforced rule… but but restricting Z visas to those older than 25… THAT IS NEW
This Month, GOOD Magazine has put together a China issue where they have profiled a number of expatriates living in China in their article Strangers in a Strange Land.
Having done our own series on Halfpats before, there are a lot of things that come through in this article about the future of expatriate professionals in China. They are young, language capable, culturally open, and are willing to get paid less than the US poverty line for their chance.
Their role in China’s pool of human resources is growing, and their stories are interesting.
Best quotes:
Mojo – A Chinese girl was walking past me and muttered a strangely straightforward phrase in Chinese: “Wow, there are a lot of black people in this country now.” So I turned around and yelled back to her “Yeah, there are a lot of black people in this country now … and they speak Chinese, too.”
Sherry – “I’m too smart to be paid by the hour.” So I moved to China to earn less than someone living below the poverty level in the U.S.
Mike – You can’t study animals at the zoo; you gotta come to the jungle.
Dan – My wife and I have a standard response when people ask us how long we plan on staying here: indefinitely, but not permanently.
John – We can learn a lot from the level at which they revere an education. I would never wish the Chinese student life upon anyone (way too much pressure and stress) but I respect the ones who make it through.
Lisa – I have almost zero interaction with expats. They live in their high-walled wealthy suburban ghettos, I live in China; the two rarely interact.
Jon – Whenever people hype China, remember that China is still two-thirds farmers. That means there are roughly 800 million farmers here. That is the real China. Even I don’t go to those places.
for more on Halfpats, feel free to peruse the profiles or the white paper Halfpats: The New Expatriates I wrote about 18 months ago. Halfpats are the future of expatriate professionals in China, so I encourage anyone who is a hiring manager to learn about us.
Originally hailing from Turkey, Devrim came to Shangahi via Phoenix and New York and has been in town for the last 2 years with a global logistics company (current assignment opening branch in Urumqi). Right now, the plan is for another 2 years, but his relationship with China has been “Love – Hate”, so sounds like anything is possible,
An active member of the AIESEC , Devrim is well traveled (over 50 countries under his belt), and was dropped into China with a corporate parachute
Brian has spent the last seven years in China, and is currently the Managing Partner of the Executive Search Group Orion China
Originally coming to China for business opportunities, he sees no end in sight to his stay in China… Defaintely a good sign for his business. He already has a significant amount of experience (10+ Years), and decided to take the leap without a parachute.
With 1.3 billion people in China, it is hard to imagine that there could ever be a shortage of labor in China. just think about that… 1.3 billion people.
How can you run out of people?
Well, for some industries, finding people is becoming a huge problem, and more and more I am being exposed to this. To be honest, if you had asked me 6 months ago if there would be ever be a shortage of labor in China.. I would have laughed. Middle managers sure… but labor?
However, over the last year there have been signs of this, and it was in a place I never thought I would find it, and it wasn’t until this weekend that I recognized that the canary in the mine was on a respirator…
Originally hailing from Sydney Australian, Kimberly has spent the last five year in Hangzhou (studying) and Shanghai (working), and recently took a new job with an event management firm (Account Manager).
Another member of the ORIENTED crew, she originally came to China as part of a language & culture university program, she came back looking for work and adventure (She jumped without a parachute)
Getting involved with organizations like ORIENTED early, Kimberly’s first jobs in Shanghai were in interior design, trade, and events management. Continue reading »
For Oki, life in Amsterdam just wasn’t exciting enough, and the lure of studying Kung Fu was the initial draw to China.
Instead of taking the expat route and finding a company that would send him over, he originally was set to take the plunge to further his study of Kung Fu… but as luck would have it, nailed down an assignment with a Dutch architect firm in Shanghai
Now., after 2+ years in China he is now working on his first start up – AMOD Continue reading »
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