HoustonChronicle

China attracts Americans over 50, nearing retirement

Expatriates are experienced, open to new challenges

SHANGHAI, CHINA - Four years ago, when 61-year-old Gene Allison was casting around Greenville, S.C., for a way to cap off a long manufacturing career, he struck upon an unusual idea: move to China.

Encouraged by what he calls his wife’s "childhood fascination with everything Asian," and despite his own trepidation, Allison jumped on plans by his company, Rockwell Automation, to build a plant in Shanghai.

He helped set up the facility in 2000, and these days keeps tabs on machinists at factories run by local suppliers in China.

"I think I’ll be here the rest of my career — which might only be one or two more years," he says.

When it comes to trailblazing expatriate employees in China, a surprising number have been older folks. China is attracting people who would be thinking about retirement if they were back home in the United States or Europe, but who are in hot demand in a nation long on laborers but short on foremen.

China doesn’t publish much data on foreign residents. Patricia Matisz Smith, an assistant professor at North Carolina Wesleyan College who studies U.S. workers overseas, sees some evidence that China is attracting a disproportionate number of expats over 50.

"They understand and appreciate the local culture and are open to new foods, ideas and challenges," she says.

Foreign companies have poured $270 billion into China in the past seven years, much of it representing factories gearing up to make cars, computers and a wide variety of other export-quality products.

"After you install the machine, you have to know how to run it efficiently," says 63-year-old James Lee, who in the 1990s established Chinese paper mills for what is now Dallas-area-based Kimberly-Clark Corp.

He says seasoned production-line managers are simply less risky, noting the central asset of his current employer, Elite Paper (Shanghai) Co., is a sophisticated 236-foot-long machine that blows air through wood fiber to make super-absorbent paper.

Unlike old-timers, younger workers in U.S. plants often haven’t been exposed to the lower-tech manufacturing methods that still power much Chinese industry. Machine tooling of motor frames, for instance, would these days in the United States be done with laser-guided drills that can cost $1 million apiece.

In China, the same export-quality parts are made on machines costing only a few thousand dollars, and where similarly intricate specifications have to be set manually.

Allison’s duties are split between double-checking the production of Rockwell Automation’s local manufacturing suppliers in China and ensuring that repairs are done right on the coal-mining equipment the company sells in the country.

"It’s blue-collar. You really have to get your hands dirty. You can’t just sit in the office," he says.

The post is a departure from his background in economics and marketing, almost all of it spent in the United States. He says he is comfortable grooming a team of Chinese quality-control experts to take his place when he finally retires, probably to Washington, Ga.

The willingness of some older workers to move to China fits into today’s budget-cutting corporate culture.

In an environment where companies have less money for country-club memberships and other traditional expatriate perks, older workers are an attractive option because their relative mobility, immersion in corporate culture and experience can make them the cheapest option to get an operation up and running.

For instance, sending an older worker overseas usually means avoiding international school tuition, which in China can cost as much as $20,000 per child.

The Shanghai American School employs a number of retired teachers taking up their first overseas posts, according to the school’s superintendent, Tony Horton, 62.

"It’s a great resource," he says, noting that few fresh graduates — a more traditional teacher pool — stack up well against the mature competition.

Ford Motor Co., too, has over the years dipped into its pool of retired U.S., German, British and Australian auto workers when it needed something done right on the "operations" side of the China business, says a spokesman, Kenneth Hsu.

Many expatriate posts for older workers are designed to be temporary. John Luey, 64, was sent from Massachusetts as the deputy manager of what is now U.S. valve maker Metso Corp.’s Shanghai joint venture.

But plant management was restructured two years ago. "Now, the Chinese general manager does everything," he says.