Jerry Yang: solution or problem

internet - Yahoo China: "Out of the game"

Bruce Einhorn of Business Week did a thorough write-up of the troubles Yahoo went through in China, one of those pending issues I could not report earlier. That the operation was in deep trouble was already no secret, but after the latest hire left, the article points more clearly at the person who is the problem: Jerry Yang.
In the latest conflict, he seems to have been the man on the background, calling the shots. Business Week:

What's behind Xie's sudden departure? Yahoo! China would not comment beyond a terse press statement. But many people who follow the industry believe that Xie left because he and Yang couldn't see eye to eye about Yahoo! China's
future. Xie had proposed a change in focus for Yahoo! China, which has been struggling in the Chinese search market and is not a leader among the portals either.
Xie wanted to try a Web 2.0 strategy, addressing the exploding demand for user-generated content. Yang wanted to stick to the company's portal model and, unimpressed by Xie's strategy, forced him out.

Because Yang is from Chinese origin, he was seen as the ideal person to deal with the Chinese market. Yang is from Taiwan and is now living in the US; in real life that makes him hardly more fit for the Chinese mainland than any other foreigner. It is even worse: when you are not of Chinese origin, it is easier to deal with cultural differences and barriers that for somebody who shares at least in name the same culture. For them it is much harder to admit that sometimes they have no clue what is happening.