Overseas Country Managers Living on the Edge | *Dark Currents: A Global View*

By Ren Qian

Edited by Jing Liu

The movement of people is a key indicator for understanding where an industry is headed. In the wave of globalization, one role stands out as particularly revealing: the overseas country manager — the person ultimately responsible for a Chinese company's first steps into foreign markets. Their comings and goings offer a glimpse into the broader currents of this expansion.

Since Anyong Waves began covering globalization three years ago, we've gotten to know a number of these overseas leads (collectively referred to as "country managers"). The title sounds glamorous, but it may well be the most volatile position in the market. A month ago, we interviewed the Mexico country manager for a Chinese company; less than a week later, he abruptly informed us: "Due to strategic adjustments at the company, I have resigned." Another longtime Latin America hand told us that the heads of two other Chinese firms in Mexico had "both been replaced within the past year." In his observation, e-commerce is especially brutal — fail to deliver results in eight or nine months, and you're out.

As the saying goes: "The company stays; the country manager flows."

In the early days of Chinese companies going global, country managers were typically drawn from three pools: internal recommendations from domestic departments, externally recruited executives, or fresh graduates sent directly abroad. Around 2000, for instance, when Huawei began large-scale overseas expansion, its first wave of assignees were all top-rated employees from various departments. Only in rare cases would a company appoint a local foreign executive as its lead. Their work was largely similar regardless of industry: they couldn't avoid the twin tasks of market development and team-building, of establishing regional networks.

The A-side of this role is the respectable title and attractive compensation — a major incentive for long-term overseas posting. Based on our interviews, Chinese companies typically offer expatriate allowances equivalent to 20-50% of base salary, with additional hardship pay for more challenging regions. Some firms also cover tax differentials arising from global taxation, plus extra insurance and other benefits.

But the B-side is that this isn't always a plum assignment.

Ya Fei (a pseudonym) joined a Chinese lithium battery equipment manufacturer three years ago as head of overseas operations. After building out a complete international business system, she resigned to found an overseas expansion consultancy. She describes facing unprecedented pressure: over the past six months, she's received wave after wave of "distress signals" from bosses hoping she could introduce suitable overseas business leads.

The success rate has been dismal. On one hand, candidates meeting all requirements are scarce. On the other, bosses tend to have inflated expectations for overseas operations. "Even when I recommend qualified candidates, the two sides rarely reach agreement after talking." Her exchanges with peers have led to a striking conclusion: the average tenure for anyone leading overseas expansion is under two years; those lasting more than three are exceedingly rare.

Behind this mutual uncertainty lies both corporate cognitive limitations and insecurity, as well as candidate-side factors.

One former Huawei employee now in consulting, who has worked extensively with state-owned and private enterprises, told Anyong Waves: "Many companies lack long-term talent planning for overseas business. They scramble at the last minute. When business development is already urgent and you throw together a team on the fly, the probability of failure is high."

"Few companies recognize that they have virtually zero brand recognition, competitive advantage, or employer influence overseas. They must build new teams, organizational culture, even new product lines from scratch — this requires the time and patience of a startup." Ya Fei notes. "If this fundamental realization isn't addressed, even hiring an overseas lead won't unlock their potential, let alone retain them."

Through more than a decade of overseas market development, Huawei distilled a competency model for country general managers: leader in strategy formulation and execution; developer of high-performing cross-cultural teams; driver of resource integration and development; owner of comprehensive business results; and cultivator of harmonious commercial relationships.

Finding all five in one candidate is obviously rare.

The headhunter mentioned above tells us that overseas country managers are the first person accountable for results during the 0-to-1 phase. While headquarters back home may provide some support, overseas this person must carry everything alone — hence the extremely high requirements for overall competence. "Many companies like to promote salespeople into country manager roles. Once business fails to meet expectations within roughly two years, headquarters starts replacing them."

If headquarters decides to replace someone due to poor market development, that's arguably fair enough. But the truly brutal part is this: even a country manager who has conquered the market remains in a precarious position.

One factor is the evolving needs of companies at different stages of globalization.

Anyong Waves understands, for instance, that TEMU's previous country managers uniformly had backgrounds in marketing and growth. In the past year, they've been replaced by people with legal and finance backgrounds — because phase one was about capturing market share, while phase two demands compliance, stability, and refined management.

J&T Express has two types of business employees: those from the Oppo-Vivo system, who form the backbone of J&T's overseas operations; and those from the "Tongda" express-delivery system. Compared to the Tongda veterans, Oppo-Vivo alumni show greater loyalty to J&T CEO Li Jie. When first opening markets in the Middle East and Latin America, Li would dispatch Oppo-Vivo executives; later, he would rotate in Tongda executives (who better understood express logistics) to integrate and replace the first wave.

From headquarters' perspective, replacement is meant to drive improvement. Yet newcomers need considerable time to accumulate expertise in the role — making this a move that headquarters knows carries many downsides, but feels compelled to try anyway.

Another crucial factor: in a place "far from the emperor," strong trust is essential. Just as when Google, IBM, Microsoft and other foreign companies came to China to hire their first representatives, "radical trust and delegation" barely exists.

Recall when Liu Zhen first took charge of Uber China — her title was China Strategy Lead, not equivalent to "head of Uber China." Real authority remained with founder Travis Kalanick, who spent nearly 80 days in China during 2015 and would make his first call each morning to China staff, effectively acting as Uber China's CEO.

Conversely, this also illuminates the typical mindset of China's new wave of globalizing companies: variations exist between firms, but the overall pattern remains top-down decision-making. And this is precisely the crux: based on our rough observations, whether overseas markets can be successfully developed depends heavily on whether domestic headquarters "delegates authority" and "releases funds," and whether founders personally commit.

Wang Jie, founding partner of beverage chain Ningji, has personally led multiple trips to North America this year to scout locations, preparing to open the brand's first overseas stores next year. Wang believes that in a company's early overseas stages, founder-led teams can assume risk and enable rapid decision-making during expansion.

"Going overseas isn't an individual act — it's a strategic corporate deployment. Founders have the power to mobilize resources, which can fully enhance efficiency in early-stage market development and local growth," Wang says.

For individuals, though, hopping between companies and roles seems to have become second nature for these overseas executives. Our interviews suggest several reasons: first, overseas executive talent remains in short supply, so jobs aren't hard to find; second, experience accumulates and transfers readily across similar regions and industries, with each new role adding more skills; third, many Chinese business models are internationally advanced, giving experienced overseas practitioners a kind of "dimensional advantage" in advisory roles.

Viewed this way, in a volatile, uncharted market, perhaps the only constant is change itself.

Image source: IC Photo