Nicolas Ruble whom I know since long has convinced me to join this platform – not easy as I am reluctant towards similar initiatives. Actually he came to me at the right moment: I was wondering if I should not upload short movies on Youtube with me talking. Well, that was done smoothly. Yesterday we had a near two hours fun interview session and here are the first results.
http://prodygia.com/experts/gilbert-vankerckhove/profile
Do explore more of this new platform. I am also still “in the learning curve”…
European Chamber Elects New Leadership
The elections were held on 24 April 2014 at the European Chamber’s Annual General Meeting in the Westin Hotel Beijing, during which three Vice Presidents, Bertrand de La Noue, Mats Harborn and Sara Marchetta, and a Treasurer, Francois Bernard, were also elected to the Chamber’s Executive Committee. It was the first time as far as I remember there was a real competition for president and vice president. All candidates gave their motivation speech, all with a pretty different angle. Joerg came out far ahead as the new president.
The member company representatives have elected Jörg Wuttke as the new president. As president, Jörg will chair the Executive Committee, which is responsible for providing strategic direction for the Chamber and representing our 1,800 member companies. Jörg is a German national and has been Vice President and Chief Representative of BASF China since 1997. This will be his second stint as president of the European Chamber, after having previously served for three years between 2007 and 2010. He is replacing the outgoing president, Davide Cucino.
Davide has now taken over my role as chairman of the Public Procurement Working GRoup. The Chamber finally “realized” the term as chairman is maximum three years. I set up the Working Group in 2005 and I have been the chair since then – nine years! I agreed to continue as vice chair to help Davide.
The challenges ahead for the Chamber are plenty. The Chamber has grown to become huge with 1800 members. Business is not getting easier; participation to Chamber activities can be a challenge in itself for most chambers who struggle with membership (not an issue with EUCCC), low turnout to events, effective participation to the Working Groups, definition of policies, etc.
Full overview of the Executive Committee of the EUCCC:
The Executive Committee’s prime responsibility is to provide strategic direction for the European Chamber. The members of the Executive Committee are collectively responsible for managing the European Chamber. The Executive Committee is chaired by the President. The Executive Committee is composed of members from various European Union Member States and is elected at the annual general meeting. Below you will find information on the functions of the Executive Committee members.
- President – Jörg WUTTKE, BASF China
- Mats Harborn, Vice President, Scania China Strategic Office
- Sara Marchetta, Vice President, CHIOMENTI Studio Legale Beijing Representative Office
- Bertrand de la Noue, Vice President, TOTAL (China)
- Stefan Sack, Vice President, Comau
- Alberto Vettoretti, Vice President, Dezan Shira & Associates
- Francois Bernard, Treasurer, FJA & Partners
- Maija Kurte, States Representative, Linearis Translations Beijing Ltd
- Tom Behrens-Sorensen, States Representative, Clavis (Beijing) Ltd
- Patrick Horgan, States Representative, Rolls-Royce
- Adam Dunnett, Secretary General, European Chamber
Beijing’s hidden village of garbage collectors is to be demolished
See the earlier post here on my visit to the village: “Exploring the recycling villages of Beijing with Radio France”
https://blog.strategy4china.com/?p=5524
Most of Beijing’s vast, but mostly ignored, army of waste collectors and recyclers live in the village of Dongxiaokou, once a small farming community in the northern suburbs of the Chinese capital, just outside the Fifth Ring Road. See here the location and a picture of China Daily.
In the early years of this century, the village ceased to be an agricultural center, becoming instead Beijing’s – and arguably North China’s – biggest space for the storage and recycling of electronic waste. It is now being demolished by the authorities.
All the hectic building in the past years created vast amounts of construction and industrial waste – metal, wood and plastic – which the villagers purchased in bulk and sold to the little recycling factories that are scattered all over neighboring Hebei province.
The recyclers also bought from waste-collectors who stationed themselves outside numerous gated residential neighborhoods to offer meager sums for items the locals either no longer wanted or had no use for – ranging from empty bottles and old newspapers to used furniture and household appliances, and, almost inevitably, air conditioners.
They cleaned and repaired the ones in relatively good condition and then sold them, directly and through middlemen, to people who were keen to buy secondhand stuff at a customer-friendly price. Items beyond salvage were only valuable as raw materials. They probably ended up in those recycling factories, some transported by the freight trains that had previously carried coal and vegetables from Hebei to Beijing.
At its peak, through the collection, trading and recycling of waste, Dongxiaokou provided livelihoods for nearly 30,000 people.
The demolition of the village risks returning these people to their pre-Dongxiaokou days, when they roamed the city and found temporary refuge in unlikely places. The removal might be right due the environmental problems the village caused, because of the dust and the pollution from burning some of the waste. But these people are indispensable indeed as long as the government is not able to produce a viable alternative.
It is impractical to relocate operations outside the city boundaries because the increased transport costs would make the recycling businesses economically unviable.
Compared with the burning and burial of waste, now a common practice in Beijing, recycling has the obvious advantage of creating less pollution and saving natural resources.
See the original article China Daily “Saying goodbye to a life of grime”, dated 9 May 2014:
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-05/09/content_17494974.htm
Beijing celebrated Swedish National Day in style!
On 6 June we were invited to the National Day Celebration in the Swedish embassy. The evening started not so well with a big rain but had decided to go anyway. That was a clever decision.
Arriving at the embassy, under a drizzle, we immediately got our big umbrellas that we happily took home. Their quality seems better than the ones I once got at the EU delegation: those broke down the same day..
Sweden is not exactly a “big country” so we were totally amazed by the scale and the variety of the celebration. If I understood right, 1,500 people were invited, that would be more than the mega-reception each year in the EU Delegation. I wonder how that compares with another great mega-celebration each year in the Polish Embassy. Well, the embassy is not only very nice (probably one of the few good-looking ones) it is also pretty huge as we discovered. The food and the drinks were great, performances were great and everybody seemed to have a good time. We also met some old friends, and made new ones. And the skies became friendlier.
I won’t give all details of what went on, just look at the pics. See the ambassador’s welcome, Robert Wells Trio & Vocalettes (the new ABBA) and the dance around the maypole.
I just hope we get invited again next year!
Snapshot China Newsletter No. 1: real estate
We are starting with a regular newsletter, likely to be monthly, focusing on China’s economy, environment, business and any topic that merits a closer look.
I started using MailChimp, the first email looks a bit weird as something did not go right with the font. Lots to learn I guess.
This is the first edition, looking into the Chinese real estate market, to give an overall view on what real estate companies, news media and economists are talking about. Certainly a hot topic, as hot as the Beijing weather.
To get your copy, download here:
140603 real estate
Comments and suggestions are welcome!