The CEO of the country's largest property-development company is a few months from finishing his executive MBA there. The owner of Yahoo! China is a graduate.
Recently, the school chose Vancouver as the home of its first overseas alumni chapter and celebrated the occasion with a reception at the Westin Bayshore Hotel.
Many in the little hub of about 30 guests that gathered represent a new breed of immigrant entrepreneur, one that darts back and forth, building business on both sides as trade between China and Canada grows.
A new report by two University of Toronto sociologists, released by the Asia Pacific Foundation, examines the recent influx of immigrants from China, such as these Cheung Kong alumni, and their role in helping Canada tap China's rising economy.
Wenhong Chen and Barry Wellman found that there is a positive relationship between the inflow of immigrants and bilateral trade. Between 1995 and 2005, each increase of 1,000 in the number of immigrants from China was associated with about a $700 million increase in Canada's trade China, Chen said in a telephone interview.
"The research started with discussion that it is often hard for skilled immigrants to find jobs that fit their qualifications.
"Mostly, it has been commonly accepted that immigrants should just adapt. The value of their connections to their home country has been ignored. But these are contributing to business."
She did much of the field research by infiltrating business association meetings, monitoring Chinese chat rooms and websites, conducting almost 70 personal interviews and coordinating larger random sample surveys that yielded more than 300 replies in Toronto and Beijing.
What she discovered was that these new immigrant entrepreneurs are not necessarily the same as their counterparts a generation ago.
Back then, many were nicknamed "astronauts" because they spent so much time flying back and forth between Canada and China, including Hong Kong; but, really, many left their families in Vancouver or Toronto and stayed overseas for longer periods, usually returning just in time to meet minimum residency requirements.
This new generation of immigrant entrepreneurs still clocks plenty of air miles; however, the difference now is that their success depends on doing well in both China and Canada, Chen said.
"They are sometimes caricatured as calculating opportunists who obtain citizenship as a travel document or an insurance policy against potential social or political turmoil in their countries of origin," Chen and Wellman wrote in their report.
"Our interviews with returnee entrepreneurs in Beijing suggest that this view may be exaggerated. Just as they did not cut off their home country ties when they emigrated to Canada, most returnees keep close social and business relations with Canada."
A quick scan through some business cards suggests as much. James Wang, vice-president and marketing director of Canadian Overseas Holdings, runs various businesses aimed at the mainland Chinese market in Vancouver. He also oversees the Blenz coffee brand in China.
When he is not at his Marine Building office in downtown Vancouver, he is often on business in Beijing or in his hometown of Xian in central China. So, his business card very practically lists one active cell phone number for Canada and one for China.
"I have many friends who put their China cell numbers on their business cards as well . . . . We try to keep the connections. I can even receive Chinese text messages (here in Vancouver) from my friends in China," Wang said in an e-mail.
Rui Feng, CEO of Silvercorp, the Vancouver-based, TSX-listed company that produces silver in China, also has two numbers on his card.
It is telling that when a reporter tries to track down a few of the Vancouver-based Cheung Kong alumni after their inaugural event, the contact details are all China cell-phone numbers, even though they might ring through just down the block in Vancouver.
Some of these execs keep their China and Canada cell phones on round the clock, to cover all the bases -- that is, who might call and from which time zone.
It's definitely a hazard of what Chen calls "glocalization."
"They have to have global connections, but they also have to maintain local interactions too," he explained.
Dean Xiang Bing of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing put it this way in en e-mail: "Many of our EMBA alumni are at the peaks of their careers, and represent the best and brightest entrepreneurs driving the Chinese economy.
"While opportunities abound within China, we encourage our alumni to go global. With globalization, entrepreneurs are free to operate beyond national borders, so a back-and-forth movement between China and destinations such as Vancouver is becoming more established business practice."
No comments:
Post a Comment