31–35 of 35 posts
Honestly, the problem isn't restricted to Chinese students. A lot of the US students that these Professors teach at Wharton and other comparable business schools see I-Banking and finance jobs as the path to personal wealth, not as a way to create value in the economy. But what would you expect when finance industry jobs pay so much more than anything else.
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I think you're right. I recently graduated from one of the nation's top universities and I can tell you first hand that only a couple years ago, you could ask almost any ambitious student what their aspirations were after college and the default answer for many of them would be banking or consulting. I think this default position can be partly explained by the large salaries attached to these jobs and partly explaine…
I think they think it's going to come back within a year or two or five at most. I think they are being delusional. For the next twenty years, minimum , bankers in general and investment bankers in particular should come to expect that if anybody's making lots of money, they're going to get scrutinized. Not just by the government and not just by the people, but by the banks themselves. The banks have seen what happen…
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Trust me, there's no shortage of entrepreneurialism in China. Insert something about sufficient sample size and selection bias here. Is there something hard wired in Americans' (specifically white Americans') brains that assume that anything they read about a few Chinese people automatically apply to the entire country?
China has well over a billion people. You'll find a lot of ANYTHING in China, including entrepreneurialism. However, in my experience, most Chinese don't believe that starting a business is the best way to wealth. Of course, I'm a white American (that happens to live in China). Perhaps you have some insights that I'm lacking.
I thought these "very intelligent" Chinese students wanted to know how to start businesses. Then I read this line: "How can I get that job? How can I get a high-paying job in investment banking now?" How disappointing. It seems that these "very, very goal-directed" dudes are more interested in a cushy job at some shiny office than in doing new things, cool things.
One of the most striking things to me about my two three-year stays in Taiwan (in the '80s and around the turn of the last century) is how much more entrepreneurial I became just by living there. The Taiwanese have a proverb, "Better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a buffalo," and they strongly value being business owners rather than employees of large organizations. In the 1980s, the development pattern…
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Gosh, that attitude couldn't be more different in Beijing. Here in the PRC, business owners and entrepreneurs are viewed with some suspicion, a holdover from the revolutionary days. For example, Li Ning was a national sports hero, and he really sullied his reputation by going into business and founding a big sports clothing brand. Folks just don't believe that you could get that successful honestly. The expectations…
well said. Entrepreneurial activity is more embraced in Shanghai, as opposed to Beijing. This thread now says Taiwan, Beijing, and Shanghai all have different attitudes. So much for lumping the Chinese in one bucket ;).
I've only spent a little bit of time in Shanghai, but I believe you. The unfortunate thing is that the top universities are mostly concentrated here in Beijing, and thanks to the hukou system, the best and brightest tend to stay here.