Why Some Chinese Executives Preferred India to Going Home

Did Chinese executives really prefer India over China?

In July 2011, The Economic Times ran a story that quietly upended a common assumption: that Chinese professionals working abroad always long to go home. According to Chinese embassy data cited in the report, roughly 60,000 Chinese business executives were living and working in India at the end of 2010 — about four times the number in 2004. And some of them, the report found, had decided they would rather stay than return.

The centerpiece of the story was Eric Yu, an executive with telecom equipment maker Huawei's India business, who had lived in the country for seven years. "Actually when I am in China, I feel like a stranger," he told the paper. "I am more at home in India. I feel I am part of the society here."

What made India stick?

The explanations the executives gave were strikingly human. Shi Mingli, an assistant representative of China Minmetals who arrived in 2008, said simply: "Indians are warm and kind." The report described Chinese expats becoming ensconced in a society they said embraced them unreservedly — some adopting Indian and English names as they blended into local life.

It was a small story, but it carried a larger point. Beneath the geopolitics and the border disputes, people were voting with their lives: choosing the country where they felt welcomed over the country where they were born. Economic opportunity may bring executives across the Himalayas, but warmth is what makes them unpack.

There is a lesson in that for any country trying to attract the world's talent. Visas and salaries get people in the door. Whether they stay depends on something no policy can legislate: whether the neighbors treat them like they belong.