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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Rent a White Guy By Mitch Moxley for The Atlantic Magazine

I read this article about how a company in China was recruiting expats to appear as white businessmen for their company. Why, you ask? 
Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave.

Below is the beginning of the article.

Not long ago I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit. 

“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?” 

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