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China Rising: If You Know Mandarin and Management, You're In

Globalization pushes enrollment in Chinese-language programs higher.

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Collins' fast track to management ranks is a direct result of China's accelerating growth as an offshore outsourcing provider. The Chinese IT and business process outsourcing market, at $1.7 billion last year, is growing at 38% annually and will likely reach $7 billion in 2010, according to the Everest Group, a Dallas-based outsourcing consulting firm.

China's outsourcing growth is still only a fraction of India's outsourcing market, which hit $40 billion last year and is expected to rise to $60 billion by 2010, according to Everest. But the rapid development of the Chinese market is creating opportunity for U.S. citizens with a spirit of adventure, a willingness to learn the language and some business smarts.

"I think there is a significant amount of opportunity," said Brian Keane, the CEO of Dextrys Inc., a Wakefield, Mass.-based firm with software development centers in China. The opportunity is especially strong for managers, he noted. "Five years ago, there was no services industry [in China]—there is no older generation that is teaching this new generation," Keane said.

Jacob Hsu, CEO of The Symbio Group, a development firm founded in Rockville, Md. that today is headquartered in Beijing, said that "there is demand for any person in the U.S. who speaks Mandarin and who wants to come back to China—we got jobs," said Hsu, who was born in Taipei but moved at a very young age to California, where he grew up.

Chinese universities are producing a flood of raw technical talent out of its universities, but management experience takes time. "People who can manage 300-person teams just don't exist in China today," said Hsu.

One of the more daunting aspects of working in China is speaking the language. If China faces a shortage of managers, the U.S. suffers from shortage of language teachers, said Yulan Lin, who heads the world language program for Boston Public Schools. There are about 2,000 students now studying Mandarin in the school system, and that's about double what it was a decade ago.

As more students in China seek to learn English, the effort is mirrored in the U.S. "More and more, you will see students realize that it will be their future," said Lin.

College enrollments in Chinese-language programs have increased more than 50% from 2002 to 2006 and now total 51,582, according to a survey released late last year of nearly 2,800 colleges and universities by the Modern Language Association in New York.

While many in China are learning English, Cynthia Ning, the executive director of the Chinese Language Teachers Association in Honolulu, said it is as important as well for people in the U.S. to learn Chinese and that not knowing it creates a disadvantage. "If you don't speak their language, you can't play on a level playing field," she said.

Although the direct path to a job in China from the U.S. may be through management, there is opportunity as well for people willing to find a job once they arrive in China, which is what Collins did. "The majority of people who come over come as an English teacher," said Collins, who began his China experience in that fashion. But then he began to do some networking.