Jim Gradoville and his adopted daughters Wendi and Weilin. Being a good father is the American's priority. File photo

 

Jim Gradoville is the China president of an international mega company that last year generated $53 billion. United Technologies built the world's first working helicopter, invented elevators and air conditioning, developed the first commercially available hydrogen fuel cells and designed life support systems for the space shuttle.

 

As China president, Gradoville is responsible for overseeing 17 factories, 14,000 employees and ensuring last year's $2 billion earnings keep on growing.

 

But one of the 55-year-old American's most important jobs is getting his daughters to their Saturday morning tennis lessons.

 

Adopting two daughters is clearly the most rewarding part of his China expat experience.

 

"When I think what I have given China and what China has given me, there's no question that I've gotten the better half of the bargain," he says.

 

"I have two wonderful, healthy, vibrant daughters that I hope will eventually make positive contributions to society and form life-long friends and have an affinity for their home country and their adopted country, America. It's quite a remarkable development in my life."

 

And what an extraordinary life it has been for the kid from Regis High School, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

 

Gradoville's interest in international events was triggered by the death of a brother in the Vietnam War and a sense that "government decisions really matter". In 1983, when he was living in Washington DC and working on US-Japan trade issues, he first visited China as a tourist and was granted an early insight into the hearts of Chinese people.

 

"I had visited Moscow as a student in 1977 and my vision and perception of a Communist society was forged from that trip. However, China was different from Moscow and my preconceptions were challenged.

 

"The Chinese people were fascinated by a foreigner (me) with a Polaroid camera, who took their picture and then watched it develop in front of their very eyes. This was the ultimate 'ice-breaker'.

 

"China was more undeveloped than Russia but the people certainly weren't as dour and sort of 'beat-down' as I perceived the Russians to be."

 

Fifteen years later, Gradoville was back in Beijing working for Motorola and was blown away by the rapid change. In 1983, he traveled from Beijing airport on a two-lane road laden with donkey carts and very few cars. Street fashion was black and blue, box haircuts prevailed and women did not wear make-up.

 

In 1998, he encountered expressways, a newer airport and a very energetic, wide-eyed and engaged society.

 

"My Chinese colleagues at Motorola were unstoppable. My experience in 1983 of being in a controlled society was fast replaced by new systems, new social orders and new opportunities.

 

"China was a place that reeked of change and I wanted to be part of it. I was lucky to be at the right place at the right time to have a chance to move and work here."

 

Over the past decade Gradoville has had the opportunity to gain a better insight than most into China's complex business terrain. As American Chamber of Commerce-China chairman in 2004 and as vice chairman in 2006 and 2007, he has led many battles to ensure the US government better understands the reality of China while also helping open the Chinese market to new products, ideas and competition.

 

Gradoville continues to play the role of a business ambassador and last year was back in his hometown addressing 900 members of the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce. He told them China was not an enemy, but a country the United States had to learn to live with.

 

He said the US-China relationship in the 21st century was probably the most important bi-lateral relationship the US was going to have. "So we had better get it right," he says.

 

"I told them China was experiencing in 20 years what the US experienced in 100 years: industrial revolution, the roaring 1920s, the post-war development of a prosperous middle class and now, the beginnings of a green/environmental revolution."

 

He says greening China was one of his company's key goals. United Technologies opened the first government certified "green" factory in Tianjin for its Otis elevators division last year and is supplying air conditioning systems to 17 Olympic sites with non-ozone depleting refrigerants.

 

"So it's fun to work here when you have a positive agenda that happens to match one of the country's priorities."

 

On a personal level, Gradoville's priority is being the best dad he can be. The year after he arrived in Beijing he adopted Wendi, and in 2002, Weilin.

 

"I grew up in a large family (10 kids) and I thought I was pretty good with kids and I always envisioned I'd have a family," he says.

 

"But I was being transferred quite a bit in my job and not being married, I realized by my mid-40s that there was a chance I might not get married at all and I didn't want to have a life without kids."

 

About two years before he adopted Wendi, Gradoville read an article about a single woman adopting children and thought, "why not me?"

 

He says one of the major challenges of being a single parent was making decisions on his own, without talking them through with a wife.

 

"So, as a full-time professional with a time-intensive job, I'm very dependent on the kids' nanny to handle many responsibilities that would normally fall to a wife/mother.

 

"Fortunately, we're blessed with a wonderfully capable ayi who loves the kids very much and they love her."

 

He says the rewards were no different than any other parent.

 

"The love and affection that children can offer, the joy in seeing them play, learn, grow, establish their own identity and personality, form attachments with their grandparents and others in the family and more."

 

He says the best part of living in China is watching his kids grow up in a multicultural environment, attending Chinese schools and developing what he hopes is a real balance between America and China.

 

And he also still really loves his work.

 

"Expat positions entail a lot of responsibility but with more autonomy in decision-making than would be the case back in the States," he says.

 

"Here you can take a good idea or an issue and work it and run with it. You still need to get the corporate approvals for big ticket items but otherwise, we address the challenges that best serve our business interests without a lot of red-tape."

 

In 2018, Gradoville expects to be back home in the States. "I'll be a full-time dad and a part-time student at a local college while pursuing other interests like local politics and volunteer work. I'll encourage my kids to take junior year high school and college abroad and this will give me freedom to pursue my own interests, either where they are or in another part of the world.

 

"I plan to take summers off in Europe or China or wherever fancy so my kids can study the language and I can take cooking or wine-tasting classes and ride the Euro rail, returning to places I back-packed long ago as a graduate student.

 

"I plan to have fun."

 

(China Daily by Patrick Whiteley January 4, 2008)