labor - Emerging middle management

Dr. Irv Beiman of E-Gate consulting wrote this week an interesting column for Chinabiz about how some of the Chinese companies are very able to attract, train and retain a growing number of qualitied middle management. I called him for a podcast, but that failed because of technical problems. A few elements of our conversation I do think are useful for a larger audience.
Compared to ten years ago, China now has a very decent middle management, Beiman says. While larger foreign companies complain about the problems they have in finding and keeping experienced middle-managers, a decent group of Chinese companies do not have that problem and have developed their own middle management.
They do not spend much money on training those people, but make them familiar with the production processes in their company through on-the-job training, rather than formal training. Foreign companies have often their technical operation very well organized but fail to get people involved in strategic management, both foreign managers and their Chinese managers.
Foreign companies also often rely on the relative smaller group of experienced Chinese managers who speak enough English to communicate with foreign management, a problem Chinese companies do not have.
Those Chinese middle managers are very loyal, even though they might earn more in foreign companies, and feel proud to be part of those successful Chinese enterprises. Since they do not speak English, they have fewer opportunities with foreign companies. Those multinational enterprises rely on the relative smaller group of job-hopping middle managers, who are often eager to earn more and feel less loyalty to their own firm.
Next time, I do hope the podcasting goes better.