Entrepreneurship : The Recipe to Prevent a 'Sea Turtle' from Becoming a 'Sea Weed'

As the Chinese economy has rapidly grown in recent years, more expatriates are also attracted back to China. When one returns, he is called a “Haigui” (i.e., “Sea Turtle” or a returnee from overseas), denoting a person with valuable advanced knowledge and skills from overseas. However, when a “Sea Turtle” cannot find a job over time, this person is analogously denoted as “Haidai” (i.e., “Sea Weed” or somebody with overseas experience waiting to find a job). The purpose of this paper is to prescribe entrepreneurship as a recipe for “Sea Turtles” to prevent them from becoming “Sea Weeds” by using the framework developed by Vozikis and Mescon (2002). The main building blocks of their framework are FAKTS, i.e. Financials, Attitude, Knowledge, Timing, and Skills. We propose using these FAKTS of entrepreneurship as a catalyst in the process of transforming “Sea Turtles” into successful entrepreneurs in a Chinese economic context and for niche business opportunities to prevent them from turning into “Sea Weeds”. Barriers to the adoption of entrepreneurship in China are also reported and discussed