At the end of 2024, three of the European Chamber’s Beijing colleagues – Beijing General Manager Carl Hayward, Head of European Affairs Ester Cañada Amela and Policy and Communications Manager Mariann Nagy – sat down with our host Gao Rui, senior marketing manager, to review the year and look forward to 2025.

This episode focused on keywords of the year, featuring four of the Chamber’s Executive Committee and board members sharing their choices of keywords followed by comments and keywords from our guest speakers.

In the past year, the Chinese government has been promoting visa-free policies to boost inbound travel. During this summer, news about the big boom of China’s inbound tourists is all over the Chinese media. Foreign vloggers posted tons of travelling in China videos and some of them went viral on Chinese social media.

In this episode, our host Gao Rui, senior marketing manager at the European Chamber, is joined by Remi Paul, chair of Aviation and Aerospace Working Group and Austin Bliss, policy and communications coordinator at the European Chamber. They look at two aspects of inbound travel, the resumption of international flights and China’s visa-free policies.

The European Chamber published its annual Business Confidence Survey in early May. Respondents reported that alongside economic and geopolitical challenges, competition is also a key hurdle for their business in China.

In this episode, our host Gao Rui, senior marketing manager at the European Chamber, is joined by Jens Eskelund, president of the European Chamber, and Amy Niu, vice chair of Energy Working Group. They look at some of the survey’s findings related to competition and discuss challenges for European companies competing with Chinese counterparts, causes for increasingly fierce competition in China, as well as provide suggestions for companies.

The European Chamber published its annual Business Confidence Survey in early May. It shows a significant improvement in perceptions about market opening: 19% of respondents report significant market opening in their industry, which is the highest level recorded in the past decade; and 26% of respondents report some opening, the same proportion as last year.

In this episode, our host Gao Rui, senior marketing manager at the European Chamber, is joined by two industry experts, Mario Huang, Chair of Banking and Securities Sub-working Group, and Johannes Weilharter, Chair of Construction Working Group. They look at some of the survey’s findings related to market access and discuss opportunities and challenges facing European banking and construction industries and their willingness to invest in China.

The European Chamber published its annual Business Confidence Survey in early May. One section of the survey is on carbon neutrality. It is a key policy priority for the Chinese Government, which targets peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. It is also a key goal of European businesses in China, who not only need to live up to their global corporate sustainability pledges, but also comply with strict EU regulations.

In today’s episode, our host Gao Rui, senior marketing manager at the European Chamber, is joined by Christoph Schrempp, Chair of the European Chamber’s Tianjin Chapter, and Xu Zhonghua, Chair of Carbon Market Working Group. They look at some of the survey’s findings on carbon neutrality and discuss companies’ decarbonisation progress, strategies, challenges and areas of cooperation with China.

With Chinese and global economic growth expected to slow, and China making the transition to long-term management of the COVID-19 pandemic, how are HR professionals’ strategies on workforce management evolving?

In this episode, our host Gao Rui, senior marketing manager at the European Chamber, is joined by Sunny Sun and Wang Shuhong, chair and vice chair of European Chamber’s Human Resources Forum in Beijing, and Ning Fei, Head of HR and Workplace, Airbus in China. They discuss HR strategies and best practices from European companies’ perspectives.

One founding member of the European Chamber went on to serve as its president for four terms spanning over a decade and a half, all while balancing an enormous workload, dividing his time between Chamber tasks and his day-job as the head of BASF in Beijing. After stepping down as Chamber president in May, he left big shoes to fill, as well as a legacy that will carry on informing the development of business ties between the EU and China for years to come.

In this episode, our host Mariann Nagy, policy and communications manager at the European Chamber, sat down with President Emeritus Joerg Wuttke to look back at his prolific work at the Chamber and the future he envisages for the organisation at a time when EU-China relations are at a critical juncture.

The European Chamber, in partnership with the Mercator Institute for China Studies, (MERICS) launched the joint-report China’s Innovation Ecosystem: The localisation dilemma on 21^st April. The report was the second of a planned three rounds of surveys and interviews among the Chamber’s members on European companies’ research and development (R&D) activities in China.

In this episode, our host Mariann Nagy, policy and communications manager at the European Chamber, is joined by Kris Van Gasse, vice chair of the European Chamber’s R&D working group, and Jacob Gunter, senior analyst at MERICS’ Economic Research Team. They look at some of the reports’ key findings, such as the different factors influencing European companies’ innovation in China, as well as the wide range of R&D strategies they deploy in the face of the complexity of China’s business environment.