Farewell Letter from Vice President and Shanghai Chapter Chairman Carlo Diego D'Andrea Go back »

2021-05-08 | Shanghai

Dear Fellow Members,

After 4 wonderful years, the time has come for me to step down as Chairman of the Shanghai Chapter of the European Chamber.

Firstly, let me start by saying a huge thank you to all our members, Board members and Working Group Chairs and Vice Chairs for your continuous support and inspiration for my mission over the last four years! It has been an honour to work and learn from you all. Thank you to all of the team in the Shanghai office starting from our General Manager Dr. Ioana Kraft, colleagues in Beijing and the other chapters, your contributions have been absolutely stellar, making my line of work smoother and more efficient. To Mr. Adam Dunnett, our outstanding Secretary General and finally to our extraordinary president Mr. Joerg Wuttke, without our collective work together we could not have achieved so many outstanding endeavours.

Secondly, with our advocacy work over the years, we achieved so much in order to create a better environment for our businesses in Shanghai. Some notable recent examples include our efforts in 2020 and 2021, the continued Shanghai Government Dialogue chaired by the Shanghai Vice Mayor which we initially began by surpassing many challenges as it was the first instance of such a high-level event in Shanghai. In total more than 30 meetings were organised with a vast array of Shanghai Government officials with topics ranging from a positive response to the COVID-19 pandemic, implementation rules of the Foreign Investment Law to IPR protection for our members. All of this would not be possible without our unrelentingly strong support from our Working Groups, the engines of our Chamber, which I am delighted to see are meeting regularly and are lobbying intensively in order to create better business and living conditions for all in China.

In addition, we also engaged with a number of other regional governments, for instance, in November, we led a delegation to visit Hangzhou and met with the local authorities, Alibaba and think-tanks to discuss the latest developments of Fintech in the region starting the first Zhejiang Government dialogue. With Shanghai standing at the helm of the Yangtze river delta integration we also built a closer relationship with the Jiangsu and Anhui authorities to keep our members timely informed of local entry and quarantine policies during the pandemic.

As you all know, as a European with a passion for fast cars, I am very proud of the Vintage Cars Challenges and Advocacy in China Roundtable 2020. Although an initiative at this stage, I hope to see this grow into something special alongside our rapidly developing Europe and China Moving Together Sports Initiative with some of the top European Sports companies in the world.

Thirdly, for member events and trainings, in the past 4 years we had more than 400 events (more than any other) with over 15,000 participants and counting.

For our Advisory Council events, I am pleased to say we have greatly increased the frequency and number of participants. We have invited the WG Chairs to participate in our board meetings and initiated All-Stakeholders meetings to bring together WG Chairs and Board members.

Three years ago, we started working with Consulate Generals to celebrate EU day in Shanghai – once we even lit up the Shanghai TV Tower in blue- and stepped up our efforts to accommodate different languages. For instance, presenting the Position Paper in Spanish to the Spanish speaking community.

From 2017 until now, we have initiated the Manufacturing CEO Roundtables taking place every 3-4 months. In November 2017, the inaugural Artificial Intelligence Conference drew speakers from government, academia and industry to discuss artificial intelligence (AI) trends with over 100 participants. In 2020, The Sustainable Business Awards, Cybersecurity Conference, Corporate Venture Capital Conference were all held for the first time.

Moreover, I am proud of our much loved and highly successful annual Shanghai Chapter Football Tournament which continues to attract crowds of over 500 people every year bringing member companies, families and their children together.

Finally, regarding new memberships, we have grown to averaging 110 new members a year, with this year already surpassing 65 new members, supporting individuals, SMEs and MNCs from a variety of different industries. In 2017 we started by stopping the trend of losing members and as we now have over 600 members, the Shanghai Chapter is the largest of our Chamber, with new members joining despite the challenges of the last year.

For our social media engagement, the Shanghai WeChat account initiated in July 2020, now has over 1000 followers and rising, with over 120 highly informative posts sharing local content for more visibility and insights.

This is coupled with our ever-increasing media mentions, in 2017 we started with 40 media mentions annually, reaching over 90 mentions and Op-eds in 2020 thanks to the united support of our communication team.

Although as companies navigating this vast Chinese landscape, we face day to day challenges, the European Chamber is here to provide that bridge to improve government relations and create a more favourable business environment for all. I can reassure you all that our new board will continue to protect the interests of European business in Shanghai.

This is farewell but not goodbye. I will still very much remain in an active role within the Chamber and I always welcome exploring opportunities to help you and your company in China. Although I am leaving, I know that our next Chair will take on this incredible mantle to represent our members interests in Shanghai and the neighbouring provinces.

The greatest appreciation to all of you who have made my time so special as Chairman.

Grazie, Ciao!

Best Wishes,

Carlo Diego D'Andrea