Hit the ground running in China 2.0. Part B: What’s your ex-pat raison d’etre?

Hey Ex-pat! Why are you here? What are you bringing to the table?

Even before the Great Recession of 2007, expats in China were grappling with an existential crisis. On the one hand, it was getting harder and harder for HQ to justify the huge expense of exporting a management team who couldn’t speak the language or manage front-line workers effectively. But localization led to all sorts of terrible unforeseen consequences - not the least of which were loss of intellectual property and destruction of brand equity. Combined with increased Chinese government involvement in business and a string of highly adverse and restrictive regulations, it seemed that top decision-makers in western HQs had no choice but to scale back their China plans. But on the OTHER, other hand a quick glance at Fortune 500 earnings reports showed that big chunks of bottom line profits are coming from the Middle Kingdom.

In or out, foreign or domestic, local or expat? China’s international business community needs to develop a new model for expat managers.

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