When Alex Li attended his first meeting as head of Lenovo India, he understood less than 40 per cent of what was said. After being asked if he wanted the job in April 2009, the then marketing director for the consumer business at China’s largest PC maker found himself in New Delhi just three weeks later – with no more than the rudimentary English skills left over from high school English classes and a Lonely Planet travel guide as preparation. Lenovo has 40 Chinese executives posted overseas, more than double the number just two years ago. Its expansion mirrors that of other Chinese companies, making Mr Li one of a growing army of managers sent abroad by “China Inc”.

The managers who run these overseas operations have a very different experience from their peers in western and Japanese multinationals, however. Chinese companies are at a different stage of globalisation and their executives are often pioneers, left to their own devices in the face of hardship rather than corporate-provided home comforts. “The difference is huge,” says Katherine Xin, associate dean of the China Europe International Business School (Ceibs) and co-author of The Globalization of Chinese Companies. “The people sent abroad by western companies normally have very good support systems in place, and they typically take over a business which already exists.”

In many Chinese companies, she continues, an overseas posting is seen as an opportunity to prove oneself, and the suggestion by headquarters to go abroad is not easily refused.