Dong Mingzhu, a towering figure in China’s business world, has ignited a heated debate with comments that her company would avoid hiring executives educated abroad because of the risk they might be spies and her preference for home-grown talent.
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Speaking at a shareholders’ meeting, the chairwoman of Gree Electric Appliances emphasised her company’s commitment to cultivating leadership from domestic universities, expressing concerns that overseas-educated professionals might pose a security risk.
While her comments were not intended to be made public, a video of them leaked, highlighting China’s deepening divide over the role of foreign-educated talent.
When Dong, known as China’s home appliance queen, was speaking to company shareholders on Tuesday, she said the company would “never use a haigui pai”, or people educated overseas, because there could be spies among them.
In Chinese, haigui means people who return to China after being educated or working overseas. But the exact meaning of the word “pai” is less clear, because it could either refer to the overseas returnees or to people who were supportive towards them when selecting talent.
Given the difficulty of distinguishing “who is [a spy] and who isn’t”, Dong said she could only be conservative and pick people educated at domestic universities.