I was just reading this article in Newsweek about the growing population of Expatriates in China, and how the situation for them (us) is changing. It used to be that foreigners had a difficult times staying here, but with visa restrictions becoming slightly more relaxed, it's easier for people to "hang and chill out" with no particularly stable job (i.e. bouncing from one teaching job to the next).

But apparently there's an increasing trend of these "silly laowais" landing real jobs, often with international companies:

"Western companies favor long-term expatriates over local Chinese for jobs that call for bilingual skills skewed toward English, cross-cultural communication ability and problem-solving instincts"

"...local Chinese do not only always know how to talk with Western clients or have a “solution” mentality toward client queries. But Chinese hires are still cheaper. “The reason you’d want a foreigner is because they bring something different,” she said. Expat hires have increased with growth of overseas firms in China’s communication-intensive service sector, especially public relations, travel, moving and consulting"

"Ten percent of New York-based Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide’s 120 Beijing employees are expatriates."

Well, lets all raise a glass of the cheapest Chinese booze we can find, in a toast to the upwardly-mobile Expat riff-raff!

It's an interesting situation for sure. I've been trying to convince a couple of my brothers back home in Newfoundland (they work with computers) to drop over and land an IT job with one of the afore-mentioned IT companies. I think they'd go home with a ton of neat-o experience, and it'd make it that much easier to land a real job back in civilization.

Invitation is still open, guys.