US Chambers crying for top-managers

via WikipediaThe Wall Street Journal summarizes an old, but every day more urgent problem foreign companies are facing: the shortage of qualified top managers to run their businesses in China. The three American Chambers of Commerce have joined forces in their complaints:

Difficulty in finding, training and retaining managers was named as the top operational problem by 37% of the 324 companies responding, more than issues such as regulation, bureaucracy or piracy.

The poor state of the education at China's universities is one of the reasons cited for the shortage of qualified managers.
One other reason, and that one is for obvious reasons not directly addressed by the survey, is that the larger companies are not able to convince larger numbers of staff with a Chinese background to return to China.
When I talk to these Chinese managers they still feel going back to China would land them in a second rate job, both in financial term and as a part of an international career track. Headhunters in Shanghai have been telling me that the traditional gap in payment between Chinese managers and foreign managers of the same level has disappeared. Whether that is true or not is partly irrelevant, since Chinese managers in those larger companies would not believe it has changed.
That issue has not been brought up by the US Chambers, because they came to China for the competitive salaries. The salaries of the workers do not matter that much in the equation, but when the higher management is getting competitive salaries, that might make a big change. That change bigger companies want to delay, but that delay might not last too long when they are serious in getting more top-managers to China.