Abstract
The unprecedented growth in commercial activity and corresponding increase in the number of Chinese enterprises that have expanded their presence in markets overseas has created new employment opportunities for non-Chinese staff and the number of foreigners who work for Chinese corporate entities has grown exponentially. As reference, over 15,000 workers employed by the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation in Africa are local hires; 20,000 local employees staff Huawei’s offices overseas and the company plans to add 5,000 staff in Europe alone over the next five years. These references, and others like them, form the outline for a new chapter in the history of foreigners employed by Chinese that is just now unfolding and illuminate a trend that will become even more prevalent and relevant as Chinese companies expand, acquire, and hire in countries around the world.
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- 1.
Spence, Jonathan, To Change China: Western Advisers in China, Penguin, 2002 (reprint).
- 2.
Brady, Anne-Marie, Making the Foreign Serve China: Managing Foreigners in the People’s Republic, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
- 3.
Source “Caring for Employees” section in: Huawei Sustainability Report (online) 2018, https://www.huawei.com/us/about-huawei/sustainability/win-win-development/develop_love [The report states that the company employs more than 28,000 staff outside China and assumes “a localization rate of 70%”].
- 4.
Fifty-one miners at the Chambishi mine in Zambia in 2005, were killed in a blast that was attributed to mismanagement by the Chinese company managing the mine. In 2006, a violent protest broke out at the same mine over poor wages (Yang 2008). In 2012, Workers killed a Chinese manager during a dispute over pay at the Collum coal mine in Sinazongwe, Zambia (BBC online—August 5, 2012).
- 5.
My translation of the following: “Man muß sehr flexibel sein, wenn man für die Chinesen arbeitet, denn es kommt bei ihnen häufig vor, daß die Zeitpläne kurzfristig verändert werden”.
- 6.
Notably Malaysia, Philippines and Saudi Arabia on the Power Distance dimension and Mexico and Japan on the Masculinity dimension.
- 7.
A random sampling of countries where China has commercial interest and companies operating.
- 8.
Ibid., page 9.
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Ross, P. (2020). Introduction. In: Barriers to Entry. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9566-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9566-7_1
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