has a strong case. “Do you know what percentage of people live in Asia?” he asked. I guessed around 50 per
cent. It turns out to be 60 per cent. 4 billion people in Asia. A mere 700 million in Europe. QED.
Nivern, now 37, is a posterboy for the utility of studying modern languages. At 14 he went on a school
exchange to Paris. Brought up in Manchester, he found himself living across the street from the Louvre. At
17 he got a summer job in a factory outside Paris, packing cakes in boxes, where he was known as “Anglais”.
“I was impressed that, even in the industrial zone, they still stopped for a proper lunch with a baguette and
a bottle of wine.”
This was the summer of 1998, the year of the Mondial in France. He tried – and failed – to get into the
World Cup final at the Stade de France, but watched France beat Brazil 3-0 on a screen outside and saw the
whole city go mad. “I couldn’t get home and I couldn’t get to work the next day either.” He went on to take
French and German at Keble College, Oxford, specialising in 17th century French theatre. “Learning
languages opens up your eyes to other parts of the world,” he says. “I just wanted to keep on going.”
Which explains why, a couple of months after graduating, he took a job teaching English in a high school in
a town, Hengshui (“not scenic, but with wonderful people”), three hours south of Beijing. With practically
no knowledge of Chinese. He just threw himself in at the deep end and found he could float. When he got
back to England he switched to international management and Chinese for his masters at Soas (the School
of Oriental and African Studies), London.
Nivern joined forces with fellow student Ed Holroyd Pearce (who had studied Oriental languages at
Cambridge) to set up not just one but two companies, China Recruitment and China Consulting. “The
simple idea was to make it easier for people to do what we did.” Those two eventually fused into one,
CRCC Asia. They arrange the jobs (across a range of sectors), travel, accommodation and visas, and do all
the networking for you. From small beginnings in Nivern’s kitchen in 2006, they now have a team of 50
working out of offices across Asia, collaborating with companies large and small. Nivern is based in
Philadelphia, where he has set up partnerships with American universities like Texas and Michigan. And
they are now expanding into South Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
Most people, like Nivern himself, go to China with no Chinese, ‘but we encourage everyone to try – it makes
a huge difference’
This year they expect to send some 1,500 college students and graduates (generally between 18 and 23) to
internships in Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, Ho Chi Minh City and... Manchester (it works in reverse
too). Forty per cent will come from the UK, 40 per cent from the US, and others from New Zealand and
Australia. And CRCC Asia are providing a number of scholarships to support people can’t afford to self-
finance. There is funding for 250 places by the British Council. Globalism – combined with Brexit – is
persuading a lot of young people to look east in search of work experience and an enhanced CV.
Nivern picked up the Mandarin language relatively late. “I would love to say I get it right all the time. But
the Chinese are incredibly receptive to foreigners trying to speak Chinese.” He reckons that the grammar is
not as difficult as German, “what’s tricky is the tonality.” The same syllable, “Ma”, can mean either
“mother” or “horse” (and a few other things), depending. “Hopefully the context helps,” says Nivern. A
sentence involving a mother riding a horse is a well-known tongue twister. Most people, like Nivern
himself, go to China with no Chinese, “but we encourage everyone to try – it makes a huge difference”.
Nivern says that China is like an onion: “You can go on peeling off layers. You think you know it but you
don’t.” In CRCC Asia’s “Career Bridge” programme (which gives you training in “intercultural fluency”),