China Expats
Types of Expats Living in China
- Expats who have come to China to teach English. As long as you speak English (and sometimes if you don’t speak English well but have a white face), you can find a teaching job in China.
- Students who have come to China to study Chinese. This is a very small portion of the expat population in Shenzhen.
- Professionals — ie. Engineers or mid-to-high level management in multi-national corporations located within China. Most of these jobs require prior experience, oftentimes lots of it.
- A class of traders / exporters, who act as an intermediary between factories here in China and customers (businesses or individuals) back home.
Also realize that the above refers mainly to mainland (Southern) China. Hong Kong is another story, with a large concentration of job opportunities within the financial services & banking industries. As an expat in China with a good education but a lack of ‘real world’ job experience, my opportunities are limited to the following:
Job Opportunities for Expats in China
- Teaching English
- Getting (more) into exporting
- Various sales positions (especially in Shanghai)
- An investment banking position in Hong Kong
- Getting an appropriate graduate degree
- Getting an entry level job in the states and getting trained in to come back and work in mainland China.
What do you think the best option is? The last two are a little more difficult as it means getting a visa for my girlfriend in China and having enough money to support two people once we are back in the states. Not an easy proposition without a job lined up before getting home (which means flying back for interviews, right?)
Anyway, that’s my view on types of expats in China & the job opportunities available to someone with a degree (but not one in engineering and not someone withsome significant business experience). Of course, speaking Chinese widens the door a bit wider for some expats in China, but as most Chinese people say, language is just a tool.
I think that there is at least one other category for expats here…
I came to China to simply have a try living here. Honestly, I had absolutely no interest in teaching English, but knew that was about the only way for me to come here.
Now when people ask me, “What are you doing in China?” my most common response is, “Trying NOT to teach English.” Sadly, until I master a HELL of a lot more Chinese…this appears to be my fate.
I wonder what job you expect to land here and what your qualifications are. There are quite a few media, PR and Sales jobs for native Engl speakers, usually they do not require Chinese. If you wait for landing a job until your Chinese can be called “good” or “fluent” it may way too late. To work in a really local company foreign requires a very high level of Chinese – usually natives are looked for.
I don’t expect anything… I know that it is extremely difficult to find a non-English-teaching job here if you do not have a high speaking level in Chinese. I have been lucky enough to recently have found one that actually has to do with what I went to school for.
My main point was that there are also people here whose main purpose in coming to China was to have a go at something different.
Thanks for your suggestions in any case.
Can you be more specific with the media, PR and sales jobs that are out there?
Hi Johnny,
Let me take a shot at this while I try to get Oliver’s view as well.
Media – for the most part most opportunities are available with the foreign major players, which means you need some real experience before breaking into this, and Chinese only helps in this field. I had a friend who got a job at Caijing magazine in Beijing, a heavy hitting Chinese business magazine, but know the starting pay was extremely low (like $500 / month low), and it’s unlikely that Chinese media companies would hire a lot of foreigners.
PR – I don’t know enough about PR in China to comment, but would guess that there are jobs for both multinationals based in China and Chinese companies – again a field you probably need some significant experience with to get any kind of decent job in China.
Sales – Sales jobs in China for expats, from what I’ve seen, mainly take two forms:
1 – Factory representative to your native country.
2 – Selling stuff to other expats in China.
Starting salaries for inexperienced expats seem to be highest in Sales of these three categories, but still just enough to get by, and way lower than in the States. But I’d guess you could negotiate a pretty decent salary if you do well in sales and are willing to go that route here.