I first met Xiao Huang through a friend in Beijing in 2006. Then, Xiao Huang was a high-flying corporate lawyer for a Global 500 company in the consumer electronics industry. Xiao Huang was one of the first to benefit from the re-opening of the universities in China in 1978, after the disastrous Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution had dashed the education and career dreams of hundreds of millions of bright, motivated Chinese from 1966 to 1976. An entire generation was unable to teach and its progeny unable to learn during that time. Xiao Huang and others who had been fortunate enough to have been born in 1961 were never exposed as completely to the insanity of the time as those born just two years before. Xiao Huang, the youngest daughter of three in a family led by an Army General who always encouraged his daughters to excel, chose to study law in Beijing. After graduation she was amongst the first group to pass the bar exam in China, a difficult and grueling test of memorization. Less than three years later she applied to and was accepted to a Masters program in law in the United States, where she lived with a host family that taught her American culture and helped her improve her English language abilities. She also later passed the bar examination for the state in which she lived.

With a fistful of degrees and not a lot of work experience, her English language reading, writing and speaking skills as well-honed as any American college graduate’s, she latched on to an opportunity as junior corporate counsel at a Global 500 company that was one of the first to enter the Chinese market in the early 1990s. She represented the company first in negotiations with Chinese joint venture partners, then with government officials at national, provincial and local levels.

Eventually, she became general counsel for the company’s interests throughout China. Also, as she was one of the first Chinese women to capture such a high-profile position with a Western company, she was often invited to speak at presentations. Several times in the early 2000s she was presented numerous awards for her corporate achievements.

After more than ten years service to the company, Xiao Huang was fired. Her replacement was her American counterpart responsible for North American affairs. Though the American had only traveled to China only a few times before – and was assured she would not have to travel much to China in the future – she had usurped Xiao Huang’s position as well.

Xiao Huang fell into a deep depression for a year, during which she found it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings. She cast about for a next step in her life, careening between feelings of anger, betrayal and sadness. Now, as well, she was in her mid-forties, and the attributes that had distinguished her fifteen years before could be found in so many more Chinese women who were younger – and cheaper, from an investment point of view – than her. Though after some months her company asked to serve as a consultant – which she did, advising on cases and negotiations – she tossed around ideas on her next steps, all of which revolved around realizing her interests in Tibetan culture (not politics) and the environment. She also took on a greater interest in the teachings of Buddhism, before only a matter of middle class ornamentation, now a possible source of strength and direction.

Xiao Huang’s trajectory as one of the first representatives of China’s new middle class has etched a broad path of anxiety that confines and directs the attitudes and apprehensions of the generations that have followed. They all have a deep-rooted sense that the corporate party for them can end at any time, no matter how high up they are, no matter how educated or sophisticated they may be. Their apprehension makes an even deeper impression on them than their middle class counterparts in the West because there are so many more bright young things coming up the ranks so much more quickly than in more mature, more stable labor markets, especially those in Europe.  Indeed, “China now has more than 1,900 institutions of higher learning, nearly double the number in 2000. Close to 19 million students are enrolled, a sixfold jump in one decade,” according to the New York Times. This year alone nearly 7.5 million university graduates will be looking for jobs, on top of the 2 million who have yet to find jobs after graduating last year.

Graduates with masters degrees and little experience are less in demand in China than in the past as there are simply so many of them around now. The MBA degree is no longer the ticket it used to be to a new job, as it had been before, either. Just as in the United States, the industrialization of the degree program has created a glut of candidates who have theoretical frameworks but little or no experience to offer employers. Though certainly such candidates are nowhere near the caliber of a Xiao Huang, their sheer numbers have severely reduced the premium at which a Xiao Huang was valued and compensated in China.

Still, with all the new opportunities presenting themselves in fast-changing China – coupled with their intelligence and experience – I’m confident the Xiao Huangs of China will find and excel in directions Chinese society never dreamed of before. Perhaps even some that resonate with callings greater than those of any Board of Directors.