Dilemma of the Chinese Returnee

The Chinese economic growth is one of the miracles of the 21st century. Since its liberation in 1979, China has grown at annual rate of 10%. Investment poured in at an unprecedented rate, fueled by multinational companies looking for better return, and the wealth of the sixty million overseas Chinese eager to be part of the resurging motherland. Multinational companies recruited overseas Chinese - those who were educated in the West but with an assumed capacity to integrate into China - and asked them to return to China to help maximize the returns on their investment. As one of these Chinese returnees, Kevin Koh made several attempts to work and live in China. Join him on his journey of self discovery and share his candid observations, challenges, achievements and identity crisis. A must read for returnees looking for a posting to China. To the western executives this is a book with insight into the dilemma of a Chinese returnee and the diversity of China's 1.3 billion inhabitants.

I was born in South East Asia and emigrated to Australia in late 1980’s. As a consultant of a global consulting firm, I have worked and lived in Europe, USA, and Asia Pacific, including four years in the Greater China area. During this period, I developed a deep interest in anthropology particularly of people living in the East Asia region - the different ethnic groups of China and Taiwan, Korea and Japan. The cultural similarilty and the use of a common set of written language, and the evolution of ’ethnical’ differences due to extended period of isolation; both have parallels on the European continent, and which were mirrored in the evolution of a distinct American, Australian, Canadian, South African, and New Zealand culture and language.