White people meant to impress clients, officials
Chinese employers looking to impress investors, clients and local officials have taken to hiring expatriates to pose as employees. Hired for a short period of time, the white recruits are given fake titles and responsibilities and paid handsomely to pose at events such as ribbon-cutting ceremonies or speeches.
One such participant, Mitch Moxley, described his experience in an article in The Atlantic. He talked about being hired as a fake quality control expert from an American company and being paid $1,000 for a week, staying in a nice hotel and being wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city. He was one of six fake businessmen who made daily trips to a construction site and toured a facility, while also spending hours doing nothing at an office.
“Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image — particularly, the image of connection — that Chinese companies crave,” said Moxley.
To have a few foreigners hanging around means a company has prestige, money and increasingly crucial connections — real or not — to businesses abroad, said the CNN article “Chinese Companies ‘Rent’ Foreigners.”
The expatriates are only required to be white, not speak any Chinese and pretend like they just got off the plane.
“Those who go for such gigs tend to be unemployed actors or models, part-time English teachers or other expats looking to earn a few extra buck,” said the CNN article. “Often they are jobs at a second- or third-tier city, where the presence of pale-faced foreigners is needed to impress local officials, secure a contract or simply to fulfill a claim of being international.”
