> I'll also assert with no evidence that it is generally harder for an English speaking engineer to successfully communicate a technical idea into business speak for English speaking VC investors than it is for an English speaking engineer to communicate a request to buy a specific part to a Mandarin speaking engineer
I've never done this in China, but I've done it in Vietnam (before I learned more of the language) and in Japan.
It is surprising how much you can communicate by drawing circuit diagrams, sketches of oscilloscope traces, and equations! It works quite well!
However one problem I encountered was that many (maybe most) vendors were not engineers and had no understanding of the parts sold. They just knew the name of the parts they had in stock, and how much they could sell them for, and that's it. Often they weren't even being paid -- it's a family business and they were just the niece or nephew that got roped in to vaguely watching the store while playing games on their phone.
This was much more of an issue in Vietnam (Nhat Tao market) than in Tokyo (Tokyo Radio tower). In the latter there appeared to be quite a few retired engineers who were quite enthusiastic to meet someone who was looking for something specific. It was pretty neat, and I occasionally encountered someone with a wealth of knowledge!
sounds like a fun challange, probably true