Gap-year students learn to give 'face' in chase for the China dream

That, at least, is how CRCC Asia, a London-based recruitment consultancy, explains its booming trade in finding internships for students that have a keen, if sometimes ill-defined, sense that China is destined to play a growing role in their professional lives.

In the ballroom of a Beijing hotel the latest batch of 80 bleary-eyed young things, still jet-lagged from long journeys, have gathered for a day of cultural induction that will help them take their first steps into the cultural minefield that is Chinese business etiquette.

"If a Chinese colleague says to you 'Isn't the Beijing traffic terrible', what do you think would be the correct response?" asks Louise Beamont, CRCC's irrepressibly bubbly expert on cross-cultural relations. A perplexed silence fills the room, so she helps them out.

"Okay. So we don't say, 'Yeah, it's awful. Takes ages to get anywhere, don't know how you put up with it.' That would be the 'bad' response. Much better to say 'Ah yes, it is a little bit congested, but then you should see the traffic in London, it can be just as bad."

This is the interns' first insight into the Chinese game of giving 'face', or mianzi; a near-endless and often opaque part of the social ritual that catches out even experienced foreigners doing business in China.

It takes a while for them to get the hang of the idea of Chinese double-think. "When a Chinese person criticises China they are not really criticising it," explains Ms Beamont. "They are only giving your country 'face', and you should return the compliment. Think of it as a game."

For the interns, a mixture of students and recent graduates mainly from Britain but also from the US, Spain, France and China itself, it is the first of many tests that leave them looking daunted at what lies ahead.

Among the most important they will have to grasp is the notion that Chinese offices are much more strictly hierarchical than Western ones; places where age takes precedence over ability and collective loyalty is prized over individual ambition.

For an enthusiastic British graduate keen to make a good impression on their first day, this is an accident waiting to happen. Louise expertly conjures the cringe-making spectacle of the bushy-tailed young intern who is keen to share his opinions and show off his 'flair' in his very first meeting, blissfully unaware that this, to put it mildly, is not how the most junior of office juniors is expected to behave in China.

"You need to think very carefully about how you will come across," she counsels her enthusiastic young China greenhorns. "The way you behave will have a massive impact on the success of your time here. You need to move slowly and establish relationships, build your guanxi."

It is a fine line between offering much-needed advice and squashing the enthusiasm that radiates from these students, who will have each paid nearly £1,800 for the chance to get an early taste of business life in China.

Daniel Nivern, a 29-year-old Oxford graduate who founded CRCC three years ago, says the company can hardly keep up with demand. Last year they placed 200 students in mostly Chinese law, finance and marketing companies. This year it will be more than 500.

"Business is growing very fast," he adds. "I think that's fairly obviously because there is a rising interest in China and a growing sense that China is going to figure very prominently in the future working lives of this age group."

That said, many of the students still seem to see themselves as pioneers of a sort, daring to go where many of their peers would not.

"I guess lots of my class are aware about China's rise, in a general sort of way, but it still feels rather far-off," said Sarah Woodward, a 20-year-old studying business and French at Glasgow's Strathclyde University, "When I said I was going to China a lot of people were like 'Oh my God!', like it was scary or something."

Later, at a Chinese banquet where the students honed their shaky chopstick skills, they also hinted at the somewhat uncomfortable sense that China might soon be where the jobs are.

Louise Goodurn, a 20-year old studying marketing at Reading, admitted that she had come to look at China after trying and failing to get work experience in London at a time when companies are cutting back.

"It was so competitive and I didn't get anywhere," she said, "So I thought I'd come out here and gain some experience learning how to interact with Chinese people and see how marketing works differently out here. I'd definitely consider working abroad for a while."

Her impressive determination was echoed by Iain MacFadyen, a 23-year old mechanical engineering graduate from Strathclyde with a passion for greentech and renewables, who said he'd have loved to score a job with Shell or BP, but that didn't happen.

"If you've got good qualifications you can get a job, but it's much harder to get the job that you really want," he said, draining not one but two glasses of beer in a double ganbei! – or 'bottoms up'.

"The job market it's extremely competitive at the moment. I know very clearly what sector I want to work in and if that means going abroad to somewhere like China, then that's what I'll do."

But more than determination, or indeed fear of a cooling job market back home, the over-riding emotion among this future generation of British businessmen was sheer excitement at the possibilities and opportunities that China presents.

"The reasons for wanting to come to China are so clear to me," enthused Samuel Carter, 22, who will graduate in business and finance from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh next year.

"China was the only country that escaped the crunch and it's still growing so fast. They have big plans for the financial sector down in Shanghai and one day I'd like to be a part of that.

"I have a friend who's studying architecture and he's the same. He wants to go to Shanghai because he says that's where all the coolest buildings are being made right now. Everyone wants a piece of the action."