Partner at Softbank China&India Holdings

As a VC William Bao Bean has first-hand access to key-industries in Asia: the media, the technology, the internet. On top of his knowledge, he offers flair in presenting and moderating on-topic panels and debates. Bean travels from Shanghai.

leading author and journalist

Jasper Becker is one of the leading voices on China's development, setting his reputation as an author with a monumental work "Hungry Ghosts" on China's secret famines that changed the world's perception on China. He worked over twenty years as a foreign correspondent in China.

Founder Tudou
CEO Spil Group Asia

One of the most successful foreign business people in China, founder of the country's largest video hosting firm and now heading a leading gaming company. By moving both fast and careful, he is a telling example of successful dealing with China's murky realities.

CEO, Greater China, J. Walter Thompson

Tom Doctoroff is the leading authority on branding and advertising in China. A provocative speaker, much wanted for his engaging style of debate.

Director Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University, Tokyo

James Farrer associates playfully China's economic and sexual revolutions in an engaging, informal style. He adds academic robustness to a subject, well, that is fun anyway.

Associate professor Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism;
Former New York Times correspondent in Africa, Japan, China

Howard French has called Africa, the Americas, Japan and China as his home, and got the best out of it. As a professional photographer he had a very keen eye for those details that matter. As correspondent for the New York Times, he was not only an alert observer of the society he was in, but was able to compare and connect between those worlds, much to the benefit of his audience.

Publisher and editor of Danwei.org

South African long-time Beijing resident Jeremy Goldkorn is a much asked speaker on Chinese media and advertising, Internet business and culture and Sino-African relations. In a witty, sometimes provocative style, Goldkorn engages his audiences. With more than a decade of experience in China's print media, Internet and advertising industries. He has also worked as a media consultant to the South African embassy and writes for publications suchs as the the Far Eastern Economic Review about Sino-African relations and trade.

Founder and compiler of the Hurun China Rich List

Rupert Hoogewerf founded Hurun Report, a luxury publishing and events company in 1999. Hurun Report produces 20 Chinese-language magazines a year aimed at China's wealth creators. Hoogewerf's close personal relationship with many of China's leading entrepreneurs provides the basis for the company's busy calendar of events.

Chairperson, CEO Trombly Ltd

A seasoned business and technology journalist, turned media entrepreneur, Maria Korolov is now outsourcing journalism from US magazines to China and other developing countries, changing the paradigms in the media world.

Director, International Communication of Baidu.com

Kaiser Kuo is an American-born writer, rock musician, technology watcher and cultural commentator. In June 2010 he became director international communication of China's largest search engine Baidu.com.

Documentary maker and journalist

Name a controversial subject in China, and Sylvie Levey has done it: China's first transsexual, the redevelopment of Shanghai, China's prisons. Touching stories from the ground give Levey an excellent view on this fast changing society.

Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group (CMR)

Shaun Rein is the Managing Director of the China Market Research Group (CMR), the world's leading strategic market intelligence firm focused on China. He is one of the world's recognized thought leaders on strategy consulting in China.

Chairman OMI Group CMM Intelligence China; ClubFootball FC

Who says soccer in Beijing mean Rowan Simons, the Briton who has taught the Chinese how to love football, against all odds. In his compelling book "Bamboo Goalposts" he describes lively the Long March of soccer in China, and the dilemma's it brings about.

Writer, journalist, social commentator

Zhang Lijia became the Chinese equivalent of a self-made woman, escaped from the state-owned enterprise where she worked, to a UK-educated commentator on contemporary issues in China.