The Wall Street Journal features a good article on companies hiring locally as they expand globally. Although the article focuses on China, I suspect that it would apply to many emerging markets these days.

Says the article:

According to Taihe Consulting Co., of Beijing, about 70% of foreign firms' top positions today are filled by Chinese workers. In the mid-1990s, almost all such posts were filled by non-locals.

In recent years, more Chinese have studied or worked overseas, strengthening their English-language and leadership skills and making them more suitable for management positions, executives at multinationals say. "My first choice will always be local," says Niklas Lindholm, human resources director for Nokia Corp.'s Chinese investment unit in Beijing. "We are an international company and we need the variety."

And it's not as if there are hundreds of thousands Americans learning Chinese for the opportunity to work abroad. According to this USA Today article, " In China, more than 200 million students study English. In the United States, just 24,000 American kids are studying Chinese."