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-   -   Chinese Companies "Renting" White Employees. No Exp Required (https://greekchat.com/gcforums/showthread.php?t=114504)

PiKA2001 06-30-2010 12:32 PM

Chinese Companies "Renting" White Employees. No Exp Required
 
Quote:

If you’re white, you’re hired.

Companies in China are recruiting foreigners to join their staff, regardless of their experience, sometimes for as little as a day or a week at a time. The only qualification is that they’re Caucasian.

The practice of hiring a trophy foreigner allows companies to create the illusion of prosperity and prestige, and gives the impression that they have important business relations with international companies.

Canadian journalist Mitch Moxley, who lives in Beijing, was hired as a supposed quality expert with a non-existent U.S. company that was presented as building a facility in the eastern city of Dongying. The project’s Chinese “subcontractor” wanted him and other Westerners to pose, literally, as the face of the operation.

Under the terms of his no-experience-necessary job, “I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined,” Mr. Moxley writes in an article about his experience in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine.

In the end, he writes, he and his fellow foreign colleagues were put up in a dimly lit hotel with a junkyard view. They were asked to present a speech, have their pictures taken with Dongying’s mayor, and were given a temporary office where they passed the time “swatting flies and reading magazines.”

Zhang Haihua, author of Think Like Chinese, says the phenomenon is rooted in the Chinese concept of “face,” which is the positive public expression of one’s identity.

“Face, we say in China, is more important than life itself,” Mr. Zhang told CNN. “So when they really want to impress someone, they may roll out a foreigner.”

These “White Guy Window Dressing” jobs often go to underemployed Western expatriates, such as American actor Jonathan Zatkin, who told CNN he was paid roughly $300 to pretend to be the vice-president of an Italian jewellery company presented as the partner of a Chinese jewellery chain.

Mr. Zatkin was flown into a small city in central China and was asked to give a speech for the opening of the “partner” chain’s store.

“I was up on stage with the mayor of the town, and I made a speech about how wonderful it was to work with the company for 10 years and how we were so proud of all of the work they had done for us in China,” Mr. Zatkin said. “They put up a big bandstand and the whole town was there and some other local muckety-mucks.”

Vancouver consultant Helen Yu, who helps Canadian companies conduct business in China, says foreigners have a certain cachet there.

“Caucasians are still really welcomed in China. People view them as ... a status symbol,” she says. Although she has never dealt with companies that hire bogus foreign staff, she notes that locals often approach complete strangers on Chinese streets to take their photos, for no reason other than the fact they are Caucasian.

Chinese companies might feel that having a foreigner on staff makes them seem more international, she suggests.

But given the overwhelming number of Westerners now working in China, merely having a Caucasian face at one’s company is hardly an effective strategy to impress partners and clients, Ms. Yu says.

Kenny Zhang, senior research analyst at the Vancouver-based think-tank Asia Pacific Foundation, agrees that the practice of hiring Westerners as hua ping, or ornaments (literally translated as flower vases), has its limits.

In certain sectors, such as ESL (English as a second language) services, a Caucasian person on staff is a valuable marketing tool, he says.

“You have to have a Caucasian face to indicate your English teachers are real English native speakers,” he says, noting that even Western-born Chinese people, with the same English skills, have a tough time convincing clients in China of their English abilities.

But with other businesses, he doesn’t see much of an advantage to hiring a foreigner who has no expertise. The rent-a-Caucasian phenomenon is likely only a passing trend, he says.

“China is moving from a closed society to a much [more] open, globalized country,” he says, noting that at the beginning of its transition, contact with foreigners was exciting. But now, “maybe the foreigners live next door.”








http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1623718/

Drolefille 06-30-2010 12:43 PM

I lol'd.

And I won't lie, I'd take that job right now.

PiKA2001 06-30-2010 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drolefille (Post 1949233)
I lol'd.

And I won't lie, I'd take that job right now.

I know right, up to a thousand dollars a week just to walk around looking important.

Drolefille 06-30-2010 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PiKA2001 (Post 1949234)
I know right, up to a thousand dollars a week just to walk around looking important.

They interviewed two guys on CNN one declined a repeat performance after figuring out WHY they hired him. He thought that he was replacing someone who was sick or something. The other guy said he realized it was government people fooling other government people and didn't care.

I see all the problematic racial stuff involved but you know, it's what they want to spend their money on.

Unfortunately women end up hired as boyfriends, not CEOs.

BluPhire 06-30-2010 01:24 PM

That's really sad. Largest population and army in the world. Nuclear power and yet they still compare themselves to Western powers.

I guess that's what Faux communism will do to you.

DrPhil 06-30-2010 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BluPhire (Post 1949243)
That's really sad. Largest population and army in the world. Nuclear power and yet they still compare themselves to Western powers.

I guess that's what Faux communism will do to you.

Having the largest population and army in the world arguably have minimal influence when talking about capitalism. America is the most powerful industrialized nation in the world. An international perspective of capitalism offers insight as to why other industrialized nations compare themselves to America. Japan is much more comparable to America than China is.

This story is funny but it makes complete sense. America is the power majority in the world. Whites are the power majority and numerical majority in America. There's no need to go slumming when your ultimate goal is to run with the big dawgs.

BluPhire 06-30-2010 04:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrPhil (Post 1949253)
Having the largest population and army in the world arguably have minimal influence when talking about capitalism. America is the most powerful industrialized nation in the world. An international perspective of capitalism offers insight as to why other industrialized nations compare themselves to America. Japan is much more comparable to America than China is.

This story is funny but it makes complete sense. America is the power majority in the world. Whites are the power majority and numerical majority in America. There's no need to go slumming when your ultimate goal is to run with the big dawgs.

Thus the faux communism mark. Japan had their struggles, but are a well respected capitalist society without needing a Caucasian face within actual Japanese society. Outside of Japan is another story, but inside Japan needing a caucasian face was never the issue.

DrPhil 06-30-2010 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BluPhire (Post 1949297)
Japan had their struggles, but are a well respected capitalist society without needing a Caucasian face within actual Japanese society.

I wouldn't go that far.

Drolefille 06-30-2010 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BluPhire (Post 1949297)
Thus the faux communism mark. Japan had their struggles, but are a well respected capitalist society without needing a Caucasian face within actual Japanese society. Outside of Japan is another story, but inside Japan needing a caucasian face was never the issue.

Was it never a thing in Japan? But these companies don't 'need' a white person, someone came up with it as a self-marketing thing. We don't actually know how wide spread it is vs. being a 'weird news' story.

DrPhil 06-30-2010 04:22 PM

I think it's a weird news story that is exaggerating the prevalence of this.

BluPhire 06-30-2010 04:42 PM

@ Drole and DrPhil

It's probably exaggerating. Doubt its a prevalent thing. More so something some companies are doing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrPhil (Post 1949301)
I wouldn't go that far.

No you don't have to :)

DaemonSeid 06-30-2010 05:17 PM

China hates Black people..... LOL

Animate 06-30-2010 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid (Post 1949366)
China hates Black people..... LOL

LOL Not just China :(

knight_shadow 06-30-2010 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid (Post 1949366)
China hates Black people..... LOL

Thanks, Kanye.

Senusret I 06-30-2010 07:00 PM

Chinese people will stop and take a picture of anybody. My friend is over there and they really, really, really wanted her to be Jennifer Hudson.

Okay, it was Japan, but it's all the same.

lol


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