Ian Johnson

Making sense out of China has always been challenging, although the questions companies and people have to ask themselves change permanently. From a rather unregulated booming economy, now dealing we a tsunami of new rules, anti-corruption and a – relatively – slowing economy changes the strategic questions you have to deal with And while everybody has an opinion, at the China Speakers Bureau we are happy to have a range of expert opinions on China´s strategic challenges. We have a selection here (but you can always ask for more).

 

 

Winston Wenyan Ma

Winston Ma is one of a small number of native Chinese who have worked as investment professionals and practicing capital markets attorneys in both the United States and China. Most recently for 10 years, he was Managing Director and Head of North America Office for China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign wealth fund.

At CIC’s inception in 2007, he was among the first group of overseas hires by CIC, where he was a founding member of both CIC’s Private Equity Department and later the Special Investment Department for direct investing (Head of CIC North America office 2014-2015). He had leadership roles in global investments involving financial services, technology (TMT), energy, and natural resources sectors, including the setup of West Summit (Huashan) Capital, a cross-border growth capital fund in Silicon Valley, which was CIC’s first overseas tech investment.

He wrote books and speaks on the following subjects:

The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace
The Hunt for Unicorns: How Sovereign Funds Are Reshaping Investment in the Digital Economy
China’s Mobile Economy: Opportunities in the Largest and Fastest Information Consumption Boom

and additionally: China’s sovereign funds, China’s digital Belt and Road Initiative, big data and asset management, data regulation, privacy, blockchain, and digital currencies.

 

Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma is CEO and founder of the first and largest Chinese digital creative agency in Europe, Qumin, founded in 2012, with the mission to “open the world to China”, specializing in marketing to China by truly understanding Chinese people and culture.

The unprecedented growth and unparalleled development of China’s economy over the last 30 years brought about important changes within the society. The adaptability and global awareness of China’s younger generation are way beyond those of their ancestors, for example.

Young people have a newly found desire to be different, to express themselves by not conforming to public perceptions. Common beliefs embedded in communist China are the reason why “quite rebellious and not popular movements”, as defined by Arnold, started to emerge. These movements are known as subcultures.

Arnold recommends that brands should always bear in mind that “changes in China happen at a fast pace, people latch on to subcultures really quickly, they rapidly move on to new things and adapt to upcoming trends”. This means that new subcultures can emerge but also die very quickly, creating a very risky and volatile youth market. Thus, brands must be extremely careful when micro-targeting specific trends or subcultures.

Sharon Gai

Sharon Gai has 10+ years of experience in leading positions at e-commerce companies, including five years at Alibaba.

Sharon Gai is a China-born Canadian who is an expert in e-commerce, digital transformation, and AI. She is the former Head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba and General Manager at a billion-dollar e-commerce unicorn. In her tenure at Alibaba, she has advised brands and heads of state in crafting their digital strategy with programmatic marketing and AI. She is the author of Ecommerce Reimagined: Retail and Ecommerce in China.

She has been the keynote speaker at TEDx, Singularity University, UBS, Nestle, Ecomworld, and Etail. She has appeared on ABC, CCTV, CBC, Techcrunch, Retail Asia, and The Next Web. Sharon is also a Global Shaper in the World Economic Forum. Sharon has an Honors Bachelor’s degree in International Development from McGill and a Masters in Information Management from Columbia University.

You can read more of her stories here.

Are you looking for recent stories by Arnold Ma? Do check out this list.

Graylin, Alvin Wang

Alvin Wang Graylin is China President, HTC HTC中国区总裁.

Graylin has written a new book, Our Next Reality – How the AI-Powered Metaverse will Reshape the World, about the pending transformation of society this decade brought on by the convergence of AI and metaverse technologies which will be published by Hachette Book Group in early 2024.

Under his leadership, HTC has been voted as the top VR company in China at the World Conference of VR Industry (WCVRI) three of the last four years, and Graylin has been recognized by media/industry experts as the most influential person in VR/AR in China from 2016-2022.

Graylin first did his research in VR space 30+ years ago under the tutelage of Prof. Tom Furness (The Godfather of VR) at the Human Interface Technology Lab, and specialized in AI/Natural Language Processing while at the University of Washington and MIT.

Graylin has over 28 years of business leadership experience in the tech industry, including 20 years in Greater China.

You can read his recent online activities here.

 

Howard French

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 a correspondent for the New York Times, he was not only an alert observer of the society he was able to compare and connect between those worlds, much to the benefit of his audience.

In the summer of 2008 he left Shanghai for a position as associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he began teaching in September 2008.

In 2017 he published Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power.

Before that he wrote his first bestseller China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa 

Howard French is one of the most quoted experts on China´s international relations.

You can read some of his recent stories here.

Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson is a writer focusing on civil society, culture, and religion; fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, travelling from Berlin.

Awarded with a Pulitzer prize, Ian Johnson worked for twelve years for the Wall Street Journal as a feature writer and bureau chief. He is now a regular contributor to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and National Geographic.

In 2020, Johnson’s journalist visa was canceled amid US-China tensions over trade and the Covid-19 epidemic, and he left China.

He has been coming to and living in China from 1984, longer than almost any other foreign journalist. He can cover a wide range of subjects including China’s economic prospects, foreign relations, elite politics, migration. He is fluent in English, Chinese and German.

Early 2017 he published The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao

You can see his stories here.

Arthur Kroeber

Arthur Kroeber is managing Director and Head of Research, GaveKal Dragonomics, Senior Fellow, Foreign PolicyBrookings-Tsinghua Center

Arthur Kroeber is a respected writer and commentator on the Chinese economy and Chinese companies. He has been the managing director and head of research at Dragonomics since 2002.

In 2016 he published his much-quoted book China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®.

You can read his recent articles here.

 

Kaiser Kuo

Kaiser Kuo is a leading voice on the interaction between society and technology. Until May 2016 he served as director communication of China´s largest internet company Baidu, he was at the forefront of change.

As an independent voice, he is able to work as a bridge-builder between China´s developments and the outside world.

You can read some of his contributions here.

 

 

Harry Broadman

Harry Broadman is a private equity Investor; PwC Emerging Markets Investment Leader; Chief of Staff, U.S. President’s Council of Economic AdvisorsWorld Bank Official; Harvard Faculty; Author, Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier

A globally recognized authority on China’s enterprise and banking reforms; 40+ years as a senior business executive and board director throughout the emerging markets; Pioneering thought-leader on global business growth strategy, risk and innovation.

You can read some of his recent articles here.

 

Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group (CMR)

In December 2017 he published his third book on China, The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order, setting strategies for making money doing business with China.

Earlier he published The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia, his second agenda-setting book on China.

Shaun Rein is one of the world’s recognized thought leaders on strategy consulting in China. His first book ´The End of Cheap China. Economic and Cultural Trends that Will Disrupt the World´, published in 2012, solidified his reputation of challenging established classic ways to frame China.

You can read some of Shaun´s recent contributions here.

Mark Schaub, Partner at King&Wood and Mallesons, the largest law firm in China and Australia combined.

Mark Schaub is a prolific speaker who wastes no time in avoiding the real challenges in doing business in China.

As a lawyer he had extensive experience in negotiating deals, firing people and otherwise dealing with the ignorance of companies entering the Chinese business minefield.

Mark Schaub has 20 years of legal experience in China and was the first foreign lawyer to enter a Chinese law firm.

You can read about Mark Schaub´s recent activities here.

 

Victor Shih

Victor Shih combines political and financial sciences as the Ho Miu Lam Chair associate professor in political science at UC San Diego. Victor Shih was the first to explore China´s enormous debts, a huge financial burden, dragging down its economic development. In his book Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation he analyzed the political and financial interactions of different political factions in China´s political elite. In 2022 he published Coalitions of the Weak.

You can read some recent articles here.

 

Gabor Holch

Gabor Holch is an intercultural leadership coach, consultant, speaker, and author specialized in East-West executive assignments and business relations. He supports corporate executives and public-sector leaders in succeeding across national and cultural boundaries instead of getting lost in translation.

You can read some recent articles here.