Teaching Chinese to Businesspeople- Opportunity?

[deremifri]

As probably a lot of China aficionados, I have the foolish thought of trying to make some money in China.

What I would like to know is the following: There already are a lot of Chinese schools abroad and especially in China. To whom do they mostly cater? Are their customers mostly young students who just wish to expand their horizon? Or do they also have demand from senior businesspeople who are required or at least encouraged by their employer to learn Chinese?

In general, would a service teaching Chinese specifically for the purposes of doing business in China have a market? What do you guys think?

[tysond]

I am a business person learning Chinese.  I don't know the whole market but I do have some thoughts.

 

A preliminary note:

 

- In a place like Beijing, expats in professional business seem outnumbered by university students, and folks working in English teaching.  But there are still quite a few around.

- I first learned Chinese in high school in 1980s. Some of my classmates went on and because very fluent in Chinese, and became lawyers.  When they were in their 20s they believed that in the future, there would be loads of younger foreigners coming into the business with fluent Chinese, sitting in meetings with them.  But actually this didn't happen.  It's worth considering why - maybe the job market dynamics for foreigners in China, the value of speaking Chinese versus the value of your job expertise, the time investment required.  

 

Anyway, of those that I know working, there are a few categories I notice.  Of course I am generalizing but perhaps it's helpful to you.

 

First, there are quite a few that only learn survival Chinese.  They didn't necessarily choose to come to China, their company sent them.

They do 1 hour of lessons per week, and once they can catch taxis and buy things, their interest dies off.  The almost never learn to read.

They quickly learn how to setup an environment that doesn't require much Chinese - administrative assistants, translators, ayi who speaks basic English, driver who speaks basic English.  The work environment in their companies is often English, at least in the meetings they are involved in.  Their value is specialized knowledge, management skills, relationship with mother company.  Or they are embassy staff/diplomats.  

They are more time-poor, cash rich, and often appreciate someone coming to their home/office to do lessons to save them travel time, even if it costs a lot more than attending a group class. 

Their employer does not require them to learn Chinese.  Their employer requires them to hit their KPIs!  If they think learning Chinese is helpful for that, they'll learn.  

[ Their need to speak business Chinese is usually pretty low.  Business Chinese requires a big base, which they will never have due to their focus on their job ]

 

Second, there are those who come to China with some Chinese under their belt, and want to improve.  They specifically requested transfers or applied for jobs in China.

Some of them are ABCs/BBCs or mixed blood Chinese, some are not.  They may have done Chinese at university or something previously. 

May use some Chinese in the workplace although still reliant on English and their own expertise is more important than their Chinese.  But they study more, and may be looking to move into a more Chinese environment at some point.  Their employer may encourage learning Chinese but not really require it.  But they have a personal interest.

Most of the people I know in this case say they want to learn business Chinese but honestly are still improving around intermediate level.  They struggle a bit with the specific terminology around business because so few materials focus on it, and their Chinese teachers have little experience.  For example, my Chinese teacher doesn't know how to say VP of Operations in Chinese -- I learned (from The Dark Knight Rises) that 执行副总戴 is probably the right title.  The challenge is of course to use such titles well you already need to be fairly strong in Chinese speaking/listening/reading.   Many coming over with a foreign university minor in Chinese find that it's actually really not that high level once they are in China.

I am in this category.  Most of the people I know in this are still doing lessons after several years.  They do 2-4 hours a week, often 1:1.  I know a guy who did 2 hours a day, every weekday for months to try to get to a decent level.   

Materials are a bit of a mismatch here.  My textbooks talk about dormitories, cafeterias, going to the hospital, football etc.  But what you need is meetings, budget, embassies, secretaries, contracts, government, etc.  When I was in Malaysia my teacher selected a textbook that was great for this kind of thing and I still use some of the vocabulary that I learned back in 2008 from her. 

[ This is where you might have a good market.  I would, for example, pay money to have someone coach me on how to give presentation in Chinese.  E.g. let me present, give me feedback and vocabulary to use instead of what I used, repeat until I can recite it by memory.

Also, someone who can help people learn trade specific vocabulary - for example I have a friend who would love to learn specialized architectural vocabulary.  This might require someone who is able to actually understand the differences between the words.  Sometimes people might need help to go through a few articles, explain the Chinese definitions of the words to really understand how they map to the same concepts in English.   I personally use 百度百科 or similar for specialized vocab, but it takes some time to be able to understand it.  ]

 

Third, there are ex-students (or sometimes English teachers) who studied Chinese *in China*, got pretty good (at least HSK4+, some of them extremely good HSK6+), and stayed on in China and worked their way up to professional jobs.  Also sometimes expat kids who grew up learning Chinese, and overseas chinese like Singaporean/Malaysians fit in this category.

They are quite skilled at Chinese but may be lacking ability to write formally, discuss business Chinese, or maybe are weak at reading (esp. heritage learners).  Part of their value to employers is being able to cross the cultural divide, but they may actually benefit more from developing their professional skillset than their Chinese.

I see quite a few of these people working in embassies (but of course, this is Beijing).

This group seems to end up working in Chinese companies more than others.  But they can also end up being part of overseas companies who are looking to break into the market in China and need people who know the market, the language but are culturally close to the mother company.  Many have Chinese romantic partners due to time in country.

[ Maybe a market here too, polishing written Chinese, helping develop more formal Chinese ].

 

Fourth, there are traders.  I don't know too many of these but my wife knows a few.  They do import/export business with China and directly work with suppliers (e.g. Italians in the garment trade).  They are apparently pretty strong in Chinese when they stay for a long time.  Typically fly-in, 1 week in China, fly-out traders don't really get very good, but their suppliers have people who can work in English.  But the ones who are primarily based in China - some of them go very deep and want to build relationships, work deeply with suppliers, etc.  Some of the ones I see have awful accents but can understand and say a lot!   Quantity > quality.  Reading is not so important.

[ Like I said, I don't know too much about this group - how they learn, what kind of teachers they use.   I suspect they just talk and listen, talk and listen.  Many have Chinese romantic partners due to time in country ]

 

Fifth - overseas Chinese who are Chinese educated (can read/write/speak fluently).  They can be young/old, senior/junior.  The only gap I can think of here is that they may be lacking a formal classical Chinese education.  I've been to a departmental dinner which turned into a competition on who can complete couplets of classical chinese poems.  If you studied outside China you may find this hard.  Not sure if they'd pay to learn this, however.

 

There is a HSK test around business chinese but I hear that uptake is very low.  I don't know much about it.  I haven't seen much talk about requiring even HSK for employment.  Frankly, when I interview for English skills I do not care about formal qualification, but about how well you can do the interview in English.  I suspect the same is true of Chinese.  

 

Hope this helps you think about your idea.  I am of course generalizing, making assumptions, and grouping large groups of individuals together.  

[deremifri]

Thank you, tysond, this is extremely helpful!

[trevelyan]

deremifri,

 

I'm a long-time member here although I don't post as much these days, but I'm involved with Popup Chinese and know a bunch of people in the education market in China, including a few that run physical schools, so figured I could comment here.

 

Not contradicting anything that tysond says above, the hardest thing for most schools is finding students. If you have a way to reach people starting a school can be a good decision, but remember that you'll be competing against a lot of Chinese companies that will have cheaper operations than you, and online advertising is expensive and difficult. This means that if you don't have an edge in reaching people, or there is nothing particularly special about your school, it is going to be very hard for you to survive.

 

As far as the business side goes, the vast majority of students are near the absolute beginner end of the spectrum, which is one reason so many Chinese teaching programs are generally awful. Because schools have to target the largest market segment to survive, the vast majority of "business Chinese" programs I have run into don't really teach business mandarin so much as conversational Chinese that might involve "office" needs. This is not really a huge problem since so much business is done in colloquial Chinese anyway and people need to know how to speak before they can do anything else, but the thing to realize is that the market is biased against specialized and advanced classes IN ALL AREAS OF INSTRUCTION unless you are really at the top-end of the market, in which case you are dealing with one-on-one instruction and even there you will have a harder marketing challenge, since you will be selling to people whose Chinese is already quite good and who will be evaluating you on your expertise and who will have heard a lot more sales pitches than they have time. So on top of getting them to know you, you'll have issues getting them to trust you too....

 

With all that said, I think there is still a lack of good physical schools. I'm not sure if this is a problem that is going to get solved in China as compared to abroad (there is casual xenophobia against foreign businesses in the education field here and it is easier and safer to run a physical school abroad), but good luck with the project if you go forward with it!

[Dan Shui]

Because schools have to target the largest market segment to survive, the vast majority of "business Chinese" programs I have run into don't really teach business mandarin so much as conversational Chinese that might involve "office" needs.

 

 

Good point. And this is why the OP might have a market. I'm only pre-intermediate, but there's a big gap waiting to be filled. The only business Chinese lessons I've ever found online are trite dialogues about office politics. 

 

I want to learn the basics of buying and selling:

 

When will the delivery come.

Is there a tarrif?

Can you send it 1st class.

There might be a delay.

How many copies do you need?

You can take them sale or return?

Just call us in two weeks.

Sorry I don't understand, my colleague can clarify that.

You can log on to the website if you have further questions.

 

I want a class doing 50 per cent daily life lessons, and 50 per cent merchant Chinese. I could nearly close a deal now even with pidgin Mandarin. I could get a solid verbal agreement, and have a Chinese colleague finalize the paperwork. 1-300 words more of specific vocabulary and I could kickstart almost any deal in my small area. 

 

I honestly think 500 words of industry specific vocab, plus 500 words of daily life words, would be invaluable to a lot of Westerners. 

 

Sure I could find these materials if I hunted around, but no-one's aggregated them... and there's your market. Some of us are focused on buying and selling physical things, not looking at how to order toner cartridges or make water cooler conversation.

 

Dan Shui

[Johnny20270]

 

 

 the hardest thing for most schools is finding students. If you have a way to reach people starting a school can be a good decision, but remember that you'll be competing against a lot of Chinese companies that will have cheaper operations than you, and online advertising is expensive and difficult.

.....

This means that if you don't have an edge in reaching people, or there is nothing particularly special about your school, it is going to be very hard for you to survive.

 

 

 

That's interesting point. I have been involved in business manly in Europe but also Japan, America and south America. When I looked at language schools in China I was surprised by real lack of knowledge and ability to sell their product to a foreigner. And essentially that's their clients. They really have no idea of their target market and nor how to sell their business. All international companies spend millions on this and work hard to understand culture of nations. I worked in a prominent investment bank and their operations in China and Japan were a disaster mainly because they didn't understand guanxi or nature of Japanese etiquette. 

 

As for some Chinese language schools, their sales pitch and approach is one of the worst I have see in all professional life. Most Chinese schools I spoke to just give you yes / no answers or on difficult questions like visas just blatantly lie or say "yes yes no problem - no guarantee" and immediately start "quickly pay, or full up". That approach would kill a business in Europe stone dead. 

 

This is where your edge will be from my limited exposure to the place. 

 

Yes, its a sweeping generalization but many foreign people and business have a distrust for Chinese enterprises and proceed with caution or do extra due diligence. Even UK government affiliated official Chinese British Business Council (who I met in a professional capacity) have specific warnings and teams to deal with this.

 

Hence its especially important if you have any Chinese orientation business to make the foreign client feel comfortable in signing up. 

 

Take for example a school like LTL (I'm not affiliated with them in any way) know how to sell to Europeans/Americans. Chinese Pod are the same, but in both cases are run setup by Westerners (I believe). As for Chinese pod, I think they haven't the greatest Chinese teaching method available, but the key point is here, I paid them, as did many others

[carlo]

 

[ This is where you might have a good market.  I would, for example, pay money to have someone coach me on how to give presentation in Chinese.  E.g. let me present, give me feedback and vocabulary to use instead of what I used, repeat until I can recite it by memory.

This is what I used to do about 10 years ago when I was working in Beijing. I'd prepare the presentation in Chinese, then rehearse it several times with the help of a colleague, trying to improve both content and delivery based on their feedback. Rather than asking my assistant to translate correspondence from English, I'd write a first draft myself in Chinese, and then discuss word usage and phrases with her. I was an odd student though -- when it takes you four hours to do something your junior colleague can do in twenty minutes, you know something is wrong. I was effectively diverting company resources to invest in my own language skills. 

 

I think learning to write better eventually brought the highest returns, although it didn't feel that way at the time. Few foreign learners bother to do it. Yet what you learn with writing transfers very well to many high-pressure work situations, such as explaining complex ideas in a meeting or persuading people. It's not about completing couplets or showing off, but rather about developing an ear for nuances, structuring your arguments, expressing your ideas more clearly. I found getting frequent feedback on my writing (as well as reading) very helpful in making me more effective in real life business situations in China, and would encourage any advanced learner to do the same.

[deremifri]

With all that said, I think there is still a lack of good physical schools. I'm not sure if this is a problem that is going to get solved in China as compared to abroad (there is casual xenophobia against foreign businesses in the education field here and it is easier and safer to run a physical school abroad), but good luck with the project if you go forward with it!

 

 

 

Thank you,  travelyan for your insights. I have heard that the government has categorized the education business as restricted for foreign investment, which means that only joint ventures can open schools in China. 

In addition to that, which other hassles or problems should I expect from the officials?

[Basil]

Although not completely on topic,

 

What I have noticed over the last few years is that more and more established multinationals/transnationals operating in China are shedding their foreign workforce. Roles previously occupied by the traditional 'expat' are now almost exclusively taken by locals.

 

Where I am based, a majority of the operations that I am aware of are now either staffed completely by Chinese or have one foreigner, the regional head. He still makes very good money.

 

This might partly be because of linguistic competence, partly because of failure to understand guanxi and partly an inability to acclimatise or compete with locals.

 

The other component might be the tightening up of the visa regime over the last couple of years.

 

Regarding Chinese language instruction where I am based, it is acceptable for levels up to intermediate and almost universally appalling for levels above that, ie. levels that make you functionally competent in the language in a variety of situations on a day in day out basis.