Ford China replacing expat executives with locals

If your expertise is in the automotive sector and you’re looking to emigrate to China, a job with Ford China is now out of reach.

China may well be Ford’s second largest market, but its local Asian sales suffered a huge decline last year after decades of growth. As a result, the automaker’s Chinese hub laid off 20,000 workers in February and is now working to remove a large number of Western expat executive managers, relocating them to other sectors and replacing them with Chinese locals.

The automotive giant plans to launch at least 30 new models specifically designed for the local market in an attempt to boost its in-country sales figures. This new focus is believed to be the result of a new, significant change at Ford’s top executive level when Anning Chen was appointed after having been poached from Chinese car maker Chery. The previous executive head lasted just five months before he disappeared for unnamed ‘personal reasons’, leaving the door open for a Chen takeover.

Sources are claiming expat service staff are also being replaced, their contracts ended and sent outside China, with the majority being USA citizens, with the entire upheaval is being seen as a cost-cutting operation due to expat salaries being more generous than those paid to Chinese executives. Another reason for the changes may well be that Ford China is attempting to follow a trend started by other Chinese car manufacturers which is said to be injecting local knowledge into the firm’s operations.

At the present time, Ford hasn’t replied to enquiries about the numbers of expat professionals who’re now out of China and possibly out of a well-paying job as well. For expats hoping to have been part of the American/Chinese joint venture, it’s clear that Ford’s desperate measures are their only answer to drastically falling sales totals and the fact that three plants are operating on one fifth of capacity and a fourth is at half-capacity. Chinese consumers, it would seem, prefer either entry-level priced models or the image created by a German luxury vehicle.