In response to our article “Will we have a better society by no longer doing business with China?” that we published on our ear-aer.eu website, the author, our board member Louis Delcart, received an invitation from the Hong-Kong General Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HKGCCI) to act as a speaker in a seminar they organized concerning “Re-industrialization in Europe” and its consequences for China. They asked to discuss the following topics: 1. Overview of the supply chain problems in Europe under the pandemic 2. The China plus One strategy & whether it is applicable to Europe 3. Challenges and advantages of moving operations back to Europe 4. How likely will a re-industrialization in Europe happen?
Louis Delcart is also a visiting professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels in the Brussels Diplomatic Academy. Its director there, Gunter Gaublomme, is currently working on his doctoral thesis on “The legal aspects of re-industrialization in Europe”. He was willing to participate in the presentation so that a strong program could be developed. They already had a lot of material at their disposal, but thanks to EAR-AER’s excellent contacts they were able to update it with recent surveys conducted by the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) on the subject and the experiences of Agoria, the Belgian professional association of technology companies, which has been guiding re-industrialization initiatives in Belgium for several years and now is also doing this in Poland.
On September 22, the webinar took place in the presence of more than thirty registered managers from Hong Kong, which the HKGCCI itself considered a great success thanks to the presence of overseas speakers. In her appreciation, the representative of the chamber wrote: “The feedback from our members was very good. The presentation is very informative and our members have quite a number of questions for you”. We hope that the subject can be published as an article in a scientific journal next year.
