The Chinese are Coming

I recently made a business trip to China. Shanghai and Beijing to be precise. This was my first trip to China and it was staggering.

It was a business trip and my first two nights i stayed at the Grand Hyatt which is in Jin Mao Tower. Jin Mao is a beautiful tall gothic looking building which just screams Gotham City but a bright lit Gotham City. Jin Mao was the tallest building in the world but then they built the World Financial Center which is to the right of Jin Mao. The WFC is an ugly straight lego like building with a handle type structure on the top and it surpasses Jin Mao by a couple of feet. Now they are building another building to the right of Jin Mao which will be even taller than both these buildings. Effectively the three tallest buildings in the world will sit in a one km radius in Shanghai. This is not what AWED me.

What scared me and inspired me was the people - in the hotel i found staff that were both efficient, friendly with strong command of english. The hotel staff were extremely driven and efficient. My first thoughts were, how i wish these people were working in our service sectors in Malaysia, Singapore.

The next day i met my office people at the Shanghai office and one young management trainee that i met really impressed me. His name is David. David is well dressed and although he only studied english from the age of 14, his english is flawless. His parents saved 40% of their income to ensure he had the best education possible. He graduated from a top local university and immediately did a masters in operational research (a math geek like me) in London. When he came back to Shanghai, he saw an add for the management trainee position and applied. His application was one out of 20,000. And we hired only 5. Do the maths - thats 0.025% of the number of applicants. And what did we pay? The grand amount of SGD1k a month.

Now thats possibly half what a basic grad will get in singapore and comparable to Malaysia and many other places.

The same day, i met up with the teams from the back office, credit admin and finance departments. I went into a meeting and in 30m, we had accomplished everything. The staff were prepared and precise in their questions and feedback. They did not waste any time and were very well informed in their respective areas. All spoke fantastic english.

The quality that i saw in David and these others, that was staggering. Then i found out there are 1 MILLION graduates who are looking for jobs. NOW, that is scary.

My first question, i asked myself was there enough jobs now for these well educated, cheap and extremely driven graduates. And for now the answer is NO. China is spending huge amounts to continue the building bonanza to keep workers happy but at for services, its still not possible to generate enough jobs for graduates. So then i asked myself - WHat is China going to do to prevent these graduates from losing hope and turning discontent.

The answer is obvious - they are gonna start allowing a bigger amount of Chinese to work outside of China. First step, they will push English in schools (being done), they will sponsor more students to finish masters programs in UK, US and Australia. Then, they are gonna unleash this herd to the world.

So my advice to all - be prepared to fight for your jobs and value add to your jobs coz the Chinese are coming and they are cheap but so very IMPRESSIVE.