China’s foreign professionals seek to form a new circle of friends for giving back to society

A group of about 20 foreign professionals in China have formed an organisation to “boost their own and China’s development”.

The group called the Foreign Expert Society, or Fores, includes people from science and technology, business and health care, and development and design.

Most of the group met initially last year when they were invited by the Ministry of Science and Technology to meet Premier Li Keqiang and mark the centenary of the Communist Party last year.

Strict Covid-19 protocols for the events required invitees to be first quarantined in a hotel for several days so the foreign professionals used the time for an informal meeting, to share their stories of living in China.

That meeting was the start of a longer conversation about setting up something more formal to help foster their connections.

The group has since grown, adding new members after a visit to an exhibition last month to see the “Forging Ahead in the New Era” exhibition in Beijing.

They met again on November 18 to discuss how to expand membership.

The meeting was arranged by Alberto Conejo, a steelmaking specialist from Mexico who works at the University of Science and Technology Beijing, and James Jao, a Chinese-American architect and urban planner.

Roberta Lipson, an American who has lived in China for over 40 years, founder of United Family Healthcare and now vice-chairwoman of its parent company New Frontier Health, started meeting by outlining a series of goals for Fores.

“We have diverse backgrounds but many common goals. We come from different areas of expertise and cultural backgrounds, but we have all come to China for similar reasons,” Lipson said.

“In a world where tensions only seem to be escalating, as international experts working in China we can each nurture understanding and international cooperation within our own fields. In coming together we can find ways to have an even broader impact on issues of national and international importance.”

One of the group’s goals is working out how to meet China’s growing industrial demands while addressing the warming of the planet due to greenhouse gases.

German oceanographer Viktor Gouretski of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, described the challenges in assessing warming of the global ocean.

“Two main sources of uncertainty are the coverage of data for the vast oceans and instrumental biases that can be as large as the climate signal we’re trying to detect,” Gouretski said.

Conejo said that for every one tonne of steel produced, two tonnes of carbon dioxide was released.

Other areas discussed included industry and environment, medicine and virology, urban and rural development and architecture, art and culture, as well as education.

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The group also has to resolve a number of organisational details to ensure its future, such as how to sustainably fund the group and its legalisation.

Jao secured private sponsorship for the first meeting but some members questioned whether they wanted to depend on sources of funding that could dry up at any time.

There was agreement that Fores should try to promote Chinese government programmes such as those designed to attract foreign talent to China, as well as the need to remain apolitical.

British educator Mark Upton said: “I believe we can be storytellers – sharing our combined experiences, inspiring and empowering others to move from passion to purpose; to ‘pay back’ to society, to give back more than we’ve taken.”

Jao and Conejo said: “All our society activities will address the dual challenges of meeting the needs of all people and industries within the means of societal and environmental boundaries.”

Fores is soliciting feedback from the authorities and will spend the next six months exploring the possibilities, with the next meeting planned for early January.