Chinese state-owned Enterprises (SOEs) are on a shopping spree abroad, buying well-known large companies such as business units within Rhone-Poulenc, Elkem, Adisseo or Swiss Syngenta, and cutting-edge technology companies of smaller size such as Boston’s AI company Neurala. Why are they doing this, how do these strategies get formulated, what’s still to come and what does it mean for Swiss industry?

Chinese industry faces significant legacy challenges. Located to survive conflicts with Japan, civil war and potential Soviet strikes, they are spread across dozens of remote locations using old technologies, poor processes and are still duty bound (locally) to provide employment in remote areas across the PRC. What does this mean when we deal with SOE’s, how can we secure advantages and what to do if things turn sour?

Join us and John James who served for three years as Chief HR Officer for ChemChina-Bluestar to help transform it into a modern world-class company. In this role, he was looking after more than 50’000 people across 40 locations.

John-James will address issues such as:

• The dilemma of SOE: Provide employment AND reducing excess headcount
  
• Strikes, petitions, mass incidents: What to do when things really go bad?
• Safety: How to deal with fatalities in a plant?
• How to work alongside rather than against the Party Secretary?
• What challenges do Western Executives and non-SOE Chinese persons face working with and in an SOE-environment ?

Copies of “In the Belly of the Dragon” will be available for sale. The event will be moderated by Robert Hartmann, General Manager, Technology, DKSH Switzerland, and Member of SCCC’s Events & Award Committee.

On our guest speaker:

John James Farquharson was born in 1956, son of a British Diplomat. He went to school in France and the UK, has an MA from Oxford and an MBA from Insead Fontainebleau. He served in the British Army, in Germany, India, Pakistan, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. John James has spent thirty years in the chemical industry, in finance, sales, operations and HR, living and working in many different countries including Switzerland (Syngenta) and China as Chief HR Officer for ChemChina-Bluestar. John James now works as a team member for the Rosen Group (www.rosen.co.il.), is married to a German National and has two grown up children. He and his wife sponsor a kindergarten in Tongren (Rebkon), a Tibetan Prefecture in Qinghai Province, People’s Republic of China.