"Returnees"

“Returnee” has not been a new vocabulary recently in China. Lots of Chinese who are currently or have been studied and worked overseas are thinking about going back to their motherland for better career path. Although living expenses in big cities, such as Shanghai and Beijing are almost as high as other international metropolis like New York, the economic boom in China is really attractive to most of them. Hundreds of thousands of IT major PhDs are dreaming of becoming the next Yibo Shao, CEO of China’s ebay or Yanhong Li, owner and founder of China’s google. Most of them have strong background of related knowledge and know about the industry. What they need might just be opportunities. Rather than being a normal engineer in a Silicon Valley company, creating their own business in China—the huge market—is somehow worth risking.
However, making a plan into practice could be a long process. Before they make their decision and eventually decided to be returnees, it usually takes a long time—could be several months or even several years.
One of my husband’s friends started his plan two years ago. He got his degree here and has been working in a famous High-Tech company at Silicon Valley for 3 years. He said that his parents wanted him to work in Beijing where they can help to take care of his kids and get family reunion eventually. However, after seriously considering about this for about two years, he finally made his decision—leaving U.S. But the destination is not Beijing but Singapore. He said that he wouldn’t feel that safe to suddenly be exposed to a total Chinese culture and Chinese special industrial politics, which he has been grown up with but has been so distant to for almost 10 years.
No matter what business one is doing, the so called “guanxi” (the network of relationships) is extremely important and determent. For most of the returnees, playing the game of “guanxi” is not their expertise, thus, setting up a new business could be really hard and desperate in some extent.
Another difficulty is that moving back to China is not a personal issue but a family one. Most of the returnees have settled down in U.S. with husbands and wives, moving back means change the whole family’s life style and fate. Moreover, the concern of identity is somehow annoying. Most of the returnees have got U.S. citizenships or permanent residents, working back in China could be a little bit strange. They neither want to give up their U.S. citizenships, which they have started to dream of once they landed on this continent, nor are happy to be considered as expatriates at their motherland. It is such a dilemma.