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Comment by comrade1 | Hacker News Reader

There are 1.2B Indians and 300M Americans. And there are strong ties between the Indian middle class and the u.s. In education and business. The indian middle class is around 300M. It's surprising that there aren't more Indians in high corporate roles considering how many there are in universities, for example.

Something that is disturbing long-term is the low number of Chinese nationals in corporate roles in the u.s. China is arguably ahead of India socially and economically. They have 500M in the middle class. But we don't have strong ties with mainland China like we do with India. We run the risk of continuing to diverge.

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Couldn't it be that the perception of China being ahead of India socially/economically is why you don't see as many Chinese nationals in corporate roles in the US?

I've talked to a number of Indian workers in IT here in Japan who've said that they'd do "anything" not to have to go back to their family homes. But Chinese IT workers I know don't seem to mind the idea; in fact, they usually go back a couple of times a year.

If you replace "Chinese nationals" with a first-world European country, does it sound disturbing? e.g.: "the low number of German nationals in corporate roles in the u.s." It doesn't to me.

I chat with my Indian friends all of the time about this. A few of the reasons we came up with are:

1) China has a better infrastructure so it is more attractive for a talented Chinese person to return to China than an Indian person to return to India.

2) Indians immigrants speak better English on average.

3) There might be some cultural difference or inheritances. But I haven't figured them out yet.

Also John Chen was the CEO of Sybase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Chen

The trend holds in the other direction as well. There are large Indian companies lead by foreign executives, but foreign executives do not get far in Chinese companies.

I always assumed this was due to the language barrier. China has roughly 10 million English speakers while India has hundreds of millions. To me, language appears to be one of the largest causes of cultural divide.

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