In contrast to the nervousness, excitement and anxiety during the years leading to China's WTO membership, a year after China's official entry into the world trade body sees little noticeable effect on daily life in the Streets of Shanghai at all. It remains to be seen whether the bulk of the impact might occur in 2003 after China opens up a broader range of trade, industries and markets to the world.
With the slowing down of the American, European and Japanese markets during the past few years, coupled with the fairy tale pace of growth in the Chinese economy, eyes searching for new fertile soil naturally turn to China. The clearest evidence is the particpation of more than 80% of Fortune 500 firms in various forms of investment and operations in China. The aggressive rush to acquire market channels in China by key global players such as General Motor, Microsoft, IBM, Danone, Coca Cola, KFC, AIA, Amway, Fed Ex, Citigroup, Johnson and Johnson, Nestlé and Kraft Foods for example sends a very clear signal to China and the world that the last of the world's Gold Rushese has intensified in China. You are either in it or left out of it. If one wants to remain competitive in this global makret, then you must get into China. If you are not in China, you may well be out of the global market as well.
With the current and future potential the China market offers, this Dragonland has now turned into a "fight" arena between economic and industrial giants. In comparison to the earlier era of opening up and reform, China is no longer accommodating sunset industries, obsolete machines and retired or marginal executives. To win in this market, the players must now dispatch the best and foremost of their resources to match their key global rivals. Unquestionably, no company can send in armies of their top notch expatriate managers, but the rapidly changing Chinese system of managerial human resources supply systems still leaves a wide gap to be filled for newly-arriving multinational players.
It is said that even if Harvard Business School could triple its graduation output, it still could not fulfill the demands from China for Harvard MBA's in the next few years, as local Chinese enterprises turn more to importing the "Foreign Legionnaires" of successful executives and MBA's from world famous institutions.
For example, a foreign language school in Qingdao Shandong recruited a Ph.D. from Harvard earlier this year at a price tag of one million dollars per annum. The once bright star of health fool - Apollo - recruited a Harvard MBA in a last ditch effort to modernize and revitalize. Ping An Insurance, the largest Chinese insurance company, recruited dozens of "Foreign Legionnaires" for positions ranging from CFO, Chief Sales Trainer to Chief Actuarial Director from the UK, U.S. and Hong Kong.
These local business giants realize the urgency and magnitude of their needs in the face of the up-coming "free-for-all" competitive environment in China. They realize that the most effective way to re-vitalize is through retraining, transfusion, importation and implantation. Besides the great number of expatriate executives, management training companies in Shanghai have mushroomed to several thousand - telling evidence of the level of anticipation for management talent.
With very few exceptions, many early expats in China were turned into "lame ducks" as they were unable to implement many of their ideas. Human Resource Development and Supply Systems in China simply did not aim to satisfy the needs of modern Western style organizations and business systems. Even today, Chinese schools or universities do not produce the required standard of personnel in many areas, including most notably - secretarial support. Without good secretarial support, even the sharpest executives find themselves trapped by trivialities, routine, and irrelevant matters for most of their working day. To make things worse, the habit most local Chinese to deal with no one else other than the "biggest bosses" further added to the unwanted burden of these tangled tigers of the big enterprise. Many resorted to bringing in secretaries and executive assistants from overseas. However, this added to costs in already fiercely competitive environments - and these imported foreign legionnaires also found themselves "lame ducks" due to the time involved in learning and adjusting to local rules, laws and practices.
Given the inadequacy of supply of quality human resources in China, bosses found themselves in one of the two categories - The "Numbs", or "The Emperor with New Clothes". The "Numbs" simply had to tolerate their dissatisfaction, especially when the desirable type of help seemed a bridge too far. The "Emperors" simply worked on the "shop till they drop" philosophy, continually dismissing staff and shopping for replacements.
I was invited to teach a class of trainees in "Professional Management" to prepare them for an examination for "Professional Manager Certificates" recenly. This was for a training company licensed by the local Labor Department.
After a few contacts, I decided to turn down the quite lucrative offer for a professional reason - I simply decided to have nothing to do with the doubtful certification system. In the "Job Post Certificate for Secretary" program of the same institute, hundreds of students enrolled in the hope of breaking into the secretarial world. However, upon investigation I discovered that the curriculum itself was not even certified. It required secretaries to take detailed studies in "Ancient Chinese Language" and "Shorthand". Unfortunately, the "Shorthand" the institute offered was no more than a system of simplified writing of Chinese characters, not the "Gregg" or "Pitman" systems popular in the West.
"We are willing to send our staff for further training, except for the secretaries", said the Personnel and Training Manager of a quite sizable foreign invested enterprise in Shanghai. Miss Wei then went on to explain:
"The secretaries always leave after only a short time on the job, so what's the use of training them?"
I therefore suggested to the sales staff of the training company authorized to organize my "Professional Secretary Training" courses to bypass the company's Human Resource Department and contact the executive secretaries and senior executives directly.
To their amazement, the secretaries were so thrilled by the content outline of the course, that just by their enthusiasm, they easily gained approval from their bosses to attend the courses. After a dozen training sessions, we began to realise why HRD departments rarely trained secretaries and why turnover was so high.
- Human Resource Departments at many multinational firms in China simply do not have a good understanding of the value that secretaries can deliver in assisting bosses in organizing their time, work, visitor flow, communication, and records.
- Secretaries themselves do not know what to do to be a worthy secretary.
- Many locally recruited senior executives themselves do not know how to use a good secretary other than for making coffee and taking telephone calls.
- Given the above, most young girls opted to seek out other jobs with more visible career paths.
A training consulting firm claiming to be the world's No. 2 told me last year not to mention shorthand in my secretarial training conducted through their companies.
"In China, nobody needs shorthand", stated the company.
"What is the model of your computer?", I asked my secretarial trainees.
"Pentium 3 or Pentium 4", were the typical answers.
Why are you not using the Pentium 1, 386 or 486 model any more?" I asked.
The typical replies related to speed, features and efficiency. I then moved on to tell them about a system of writing that would enable them to write as fast as people spoke with no need for electricity or batteries, etc. They were amazed as they gradually learned to take down the telephone messages without asking the caller to repeat anything. Convinced, they are looking forward to further polish they shorthand skills.
Literally "jia yang gui zhi" means "the bum who fakes being a foreigner". During the early days of the opening up, foreign invested enterprises were given privileges to import many necessary items for work and living, such as automobiles, machinery, air conditioners, TV, and VDO, tax-free plus the exemption from corporate income taxes. It was found that many companies taking benefit of this were actually fake foreign enterprises or foreign joint ventures. It was common practice for firms or individuals in China then to register a firm in Hong Kong, Macao, or other foreign countries, with or without actually doing businesses there for the sole purpose of keeping these privelages. These fake foreign firms invest as a wholly foreign owned enterprise or form a joint venture with its parent company in China, thus qualifying them for those generous tax-free imports. These fake foreign enterprises were called the "jia yang gui zhi".
Once I was asked to attend the Annual Meeting of Chief Officers of Foreign Enterprises in a coastal Chinese city. Being so busy, I tried to delegate my local deputy general manager to the meeting, but the organizer insisted that I attend the meeting myself and to also deliver a speech on the progress of venture in my charge. I pondered all night several days before the meeting whether to deliver my speech in Mandarin or English. At the meeting, I met the Chief Officer from 10 other "foreign enterprises", nine of which were "jia yang gui zhi's" (JYGZ). As the meeting moved on, the speeches were delivered by those JYGZ in the local dialect which I had great difficulty understanding. I had to ask an officer of the local government sitting next to me to write down what he heard so that I could read and undertand what was being said.
With Chinese economy moving at fast pace and real foreign enterprises flocking in, Shanghai alone accounts for no less than 500,000 regular expats. Now there is a new breed of the JYGZs. This time the bums are really from foreign countries or, at least, possess the look of real foreigners. They are hired in numbers by, for example, the insurance, direct selling, club membership selling, real estate agent, golf club, and investment scheme firms to make calls on foreign executives. These people, many of whom speak excellent Mandarin, insist on speaking English or other foreign languages when they meet the receptionists at the prospective clients' offices. Since most local receptionists do not speak good English, the caller presents no business card, and generally speaks only very short and clear sentence - "I will only speak to your boss."... In many cases they succeed as receptionists or secretaries are exceptionally polite to those who do not speak Chinese.
Having learned about the problem from many of my secretarial trainees, I came up with a quite simple way to ward off executives from these JYGZ salespeople - a visitor call card. The form would be available from the reception dest or the door guard's post. Without filling in the form, the caller will be flatly refused the meeting with the executive.
To those fake journalist that make frequent request for "interviews" with expat CEOs, most of which lead to sales pushes for such things as advertising space, we suggest to have the company's history and key executives' brief bios printed up. Whenever receiving a request for interview, all the secretary has to do is to ask for their fax number and fax them a copy in place of the requested "interview".
Since the beginning of this year, the Shanghai City government has been issuing 3 to 5 year Temporary Resident Permits to qualified foreign professionals. This will certainly save regulars the trouble and time involved in getting their visa renewed every 6-12 months as previously required. The Resident Permits also qualify the receipient's children to attend local schools in Shanghai.
