Debate continues about value of non-Chinese over returnees The fact is, if you ask a thousand professionals in China whether or not expats are still valuable, you will get at least a thousand different answers, possibly more. In 10 years of living in Beijing and commuting between Shanghai and other cities, and after talking to hundreds of people about the role of the expat, particularly the role of the expat versus returnee, I have come to some conclusions, which I share with you here. Let us first analyze the returnee’s role in Chinese business. Returnees (those of Chinese descent who have been brought up or at least studied overseas) usually straddle both sides of the cultural hemispheres: On the one […]