I have read with great interest and admiration Peter Hessler's book "River Town" as well his New Yorker articles on China. He first went to China as a Peace Corps volunteer to teach English in a small town and subsequently stayed there for years to write about China, with a very good understanding of China. He wrote in one of his articles that one thing that vexed him tremendously is that a Caucasion (with a Chinese name Da Shan) could become a celebrity in China solely because he could speak Chinese with almost no accent, while having no other skills. In the US, it would be the equivalent of a Chinese person speaking English without accent - which of course does not catch anyone's attention.
Today I received as part of a mass mail an email announcement of someone joining a big investment bank as their head of China pharma in equity research. This guy was a Harvard undergrad, who went on to get a MD/PhD, followed by a brief stint at McKinsey and another even briefer stint as a junior business development person at a small biotech company. I met him because he reached out to me to seek career advice, since he spent several years of his childhood in China, when his parents were teaching English there. Therefore, he has an interest in Chinese life science industry. I first talked to him on the phone for an hour, and then I agreed to meet him for coffee for another hour or so. He was well-spoken and friendly but was prone to exaggerated flattery. His movement from one company to another was so fast and frequent that he asked to meet again for career advice and more introductions for him to meet the "movers and shakers" of the industry. I found that a bit egregious and hence did not respond. He did a few months of independent consulting. In this email announcement, he said that the demand for his advice and expertise was so strong that he found himself traveling as much as when he was at McKinsey. Since his wife is expecting now, they want to move to Asia, and he was glad to receive the offer from this top-notch investment bank. While making the announcement for his new position, he wrote a full paragraph complete with bullet points illustrating his few months of independent consulting as nothing but astounding success. It seems a bit baffling to dwell so much on his few months of consulting, during which period he asked for introductions to companies or people who might want to hire him. But then I realized the motive behind it - he wanted to broadcast that he never wanted to look for a job but this job came begging for him.
To be honest, I don't have a high opinion of equity research in general. No one can make money from the stock market by following equity research. Still, it is a highly lucrative position which in this economy must have been coveted by many. I could not help but think of Peter Hessler's complaint.
Since I have met him and talked to this guy, I know about his rudimentary knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry and his limited understanding of Chinese life science circle . I also heard him speak Chinese, which is better than those who learned Chinese in school here in the US, but nowhere near the level of proficiency to conduct business discussions in Chinese. Sure he has a good resume with good schools, high degrees and an interesting upbringing, but clearly that's not sufficient for a position that presumably represents the "expert opinion" of a major bank on a fast-growing sector in perhaps the most fascinating country for now - China.
Many Chinese people I know complain about the double standard set up for the Chinese or Asian immigrants in general, in that they have to work twice as hard and achieve twice as much to gain the same level of recognition. I have always felt ambivalent about these complaints, in that there are good reasons for many people in this camp to not gain the recognition they deserve for various reasons, including lack of leadership potential or interpersonal skills. However, just as I cannot deny the validity of the feminist movement in general, I cannot deny the double standard that does exist for Asians, especially those recent immigrants who cannot speak English well.
On the other hand, it is the Chinese people in China that launched the celebrity career of Da Shan simply because he is a Caucasian Canadian who speaks Chinese without much of an accent. It is so rare to see someone like Da Shan that the Chinese are enamored and flattered - so they showered him with admiration and adoration.
Talking about this guy I know, I guess his English is better than those US-trained Chinese professionals while his Chinese is better than most of his fellow Americans. His position could have easily been given to a Chinese professional educated in the US. But alas, for a US-trained Chinese professional, his/her English will be compared to Americans/Brits, and his/her Chinese will be compared to the those who have never left China, in which case he/she loses on both comparisons.
Yes, the double standards do exist for the Chinese, but they have themselves to blame as well.
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