Asians abroad heed call to 'go east'

Asian professionals living in the United States and Europe are heeding a new call to "Go East" for brighter job prospects in a region expected to outperform the rest of the world in economic growth.

Zhang Zheng Han, 26, is one of a growing flock of highly educated Asians living in the West who have bought one-way tickets home, lured by job opportunities, family ties and a comfortable lifestyle.

"Right now, no nation is changing as swiftly as China," Han said. "There are so many opportunities for people in my generation."

After earning his master's degree in engineering from England's Nottingham University, Han returned to his home in China and immediately began work for a stem cell research firm.

Other Asians should follow, according to American investor Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund.

He thinks this century will be China's and now lives in ethnically Chinese Singapore, where his children are learning Mandarin.

"If you're in London, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time ... You have to move east," Rogers told Reuters TV.

The trend of reverse migration has accelerated in the past few months as the financial crisis has hit the United States and Europe harder than many Asian economies.

This influx will serve Asia well, as it needs skilled managers to leverage further growth, experts said.

"These returnees would serve as a bridge between Asia and the rest of the economies," said Irvin Seah, an economist at Singapore's DBS, Southeast Asia's largest bank.

"With the exposure they had to Western economies and their local knowledge, they will be able to fill the human capital gap in Asia and significantly contribute to Asia's growth," Seah said.

The average Asian returnee is in his or her 30s, has a master's or doctoral degree and is trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, according to Vivek Wadhwa, a researcher at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School in the United States.

Observers said these new arrivals are cheaper to hire than expatriates and sometimes are considered more qualified than locals because of "soft" skills learned in the West.

"We're constantly replacing expats with Asian returnees, people from their home countries who have been somewhat Westernized in business practices or business culture," said Ames Gross, president of Pacific Bridge.

Pacific Bridge is a US-based recruitment firm that specializes in matching returnees to Asia-based firms.

Gross said wages in developing Southeast Asian countries can be 25 percent of those in the West, but added that the wage gap for professionals is narrowing.

Singapore and Hong Kong companies now pay wages comparable to those offered in the United States and Europe, Gross said.

Closing a gap

Firms in Asia will need a lot of talent to drive growth.

Executive search firm MRI Group reported last year that companies in China will need 70,000 middle and senior managers over the next five years.

An estimated 6 million students will graduate from colleges in China this year, and 3 million will graduate in India.

But human resource experts said local graduates often lack the communications and practical business skills of their Western-educated counterparts.

"At the organizational level, companies in the US tend to better understand marketing, positioning and differentiation," said Vikram Narayan, an Indian returnee.

Narayan started his own firm, Ascendus Technologies, in Bangalore after working as an analyst at US-based Sun Microsystems.

"Managing customer expectations is definitely something I learned when I was in the United States," Narayan said.

It's not just management and marketing know-how. Asian returnees have also been credited with bringing sparks of technological innovation to their home countries.

Robin Li, a graduate of the State University of New York, co-founded China's largest Internet search engine, Baidu.

Hotmail is the brainchild of Sabeer Bhatia, who returned to India after graduating from Stanford University.

"The returnees are a lot more innovative and entrepreneurial than the locals are," Harvard Law School's Wadhwa said.

"So you're already seeing huge benefits to India and China from people who came back," Wadhwa said.

Reuters

(China Daily 07/13/2009 page5)