When Ash Monga started hiring for his sourcing company in southern China 15 years ago, he made the same mistake most foreign firms make. He hired for English.
“It was very easy for us to overestimate the capacity of people who spoke good English to actually deliver on the job,” said Monga, founder of Guangzhou-based IMEX Sourcing Services. “In interviews, people who speak good English will always outshine the ones who don’t.”
It’s not hard to see why. Despite having more English language learners than any other country, China’s proficiency levels remain low. Only around 10 to 25 million people in the Chinese mainland speak English fluently, roughly 1-2% of the population, depending on how you define proficiency. The EF English Proficiency Index ranks China around 86th out of 116 countries and territories, with a national score of 464, below the global average of roughly 477 to 488.
That makes hiring English speakers in China competitive and expensive — and the ones who do exist tend to cluster in teaching, marketing and sales, not on factory floors or in sourcing teams.
The EF data breaks down English proficiency by job function, based on test scores out of 800. In China, marketing professionals scored highest at 529, followed by strategy and project management roles at 517 and sales staff at 510. Purchasing and procurement scored just 459, among the lowest of any professional category. Put simply, the people already doing supply chain work in China are among the least likely to speak good English.
English Proficiency by Job Function in China
Source: EF English Proficiency Index
For supply chain companies hiring on the ground, that means the pool of candidates who can impress English-speaking executives on a video call is small, fiercely competed for and expensive. The much larger pool of skilled professionals who cannot gets overlooked entirely.
“When we created more role-specific tests, we realized that there were amazing, very talented Chinese-speaking people who understood sourcing, understood quality control,” Monga said. “They were very good at negotiation, very detail-oriented. And that completely changed our mindset.”
Even so, limited English proficiency is often a dealbreaker for recruiters — no matter how stacked their CV. After all, how do you manage someone you can barely talk to?
The temptation for many companies, especially those with limited resources, is to keep searching for a single hire who can manage suppliers in Chinese and report back to headquarters in fluent English. But as the data shows, those candidates barely exist.
Monga’s answer was to stop looking for one person and build a team with differentiated roles instead. The key was deciding upfront which roles actually needed English and which didn’t. IMEX separated client-facing account management, where English is essential, from technical sourcing and quality control work, where deep supply chain knowledge matters more.
“English is an important factor,” he said. “But if you can get more specialized skills and separate the roles, then that would be something I would advise.”
Build a Team, Not a Single Hire
The model that often works is a team structure with a bilingual leader who can communicate directly with headquarters, supported by specialists who do not need to be fluent speakers. Those team members still need to read and write English well enough to handle emails, reports and key documentation, but they do not need to lead a call with London or New York. That distinction alone opens up a significantly wider talent pool and brings in candidates with stronger technical credentials.
Yes, building a team costs more than a single hire. But the tradeoff is access to deeper expertise at every level.
For companies not yet ready to build a full team, we suggest starting with one key hire: a supplier account manager. But choose this person with the future in mind. Look for someone with the sourcing and supplier management skills you need today, but also the communication ability and leadership potential to manage a broader team as your China operations grow. That way, your first hire becomes the foundation of your team, not a role you eventually need to hire around.
“I always recommend anyone, if they have the resources, to get a certain degree of specialization in their teams early, because that makes everything else a lot easier in terms of quality control, communication and a whole host of other things,” Monga said.
Communication Runs Both Ways
Yet, there is one condition that makes or breaks this approach. Building a team around lower-English roles only works if those employees are properly supported in their own language. HR issues, workplace concerns, contract questions and day-to-day management all need to be handled in Chinese by someone who understands the local labour environment.
Without that, companies risk the same problems that come from managing entirely by remote: miscommunication, disengagement and sudden resignations.
For firms without the scale to justify a dedicated China-based HR hire, employer of record providers can fill that gap, offering local-language HR support alongside employment compliance and payroll. Either way, the principle is the same: if your team operates mostly in Chinese, their support structures need to as well.
The Bottom Line
The practical takeaway for hiring managers is straightforward:
- Build a team, not a single hire
- Put a strong English-speaking leader at the top
- Hire specialists for their technical ability, not their fluency
- Make sure the whole team has access to Chinese-language HR support locally
The companies getting the most from their China teams are often the ones who stopped treating English as the first filter.
Watch the Full Interview
Want to hear it straight from Ash? In this episode of “On The Ground,” Kinyu CEO Benjamin King sits down with Ash to discuss how businesses can build and scale sustainable China sourcing teams. Watch the full interview on YouTube.
