Fellow Whiffer, Chris Twigge-Molecey, has been asked to give us an update on his March 2019 talk on China. With the coronation of Xi Jinping for a third term as CCP General Secretary, have China’s global ambitions changed and what should we, as Canadians, really worry about?

Chris has been developing and leading businesses in China for over 20 years and brings to us a businessman’s perspective on opportunities during these times of troubled bi-lateral relations. Swamped with stories of Chinese IP theft and election interference, we have lost sight of the Belt and Road Initiative, (the BRI), China’s massive and largely successful geopolitical strategy.

What is the BRI? What has it achieved? Where is it going and what’s in it for Canadian business? These questions will be the focus of Chris’s talk this evening.

Chris was a director of the Canada-China Business Council and President of the The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum. He serves on the board of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, and is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He chaired the Federal Task Force on privatization of part of Natural Resources Canada and sat on their Green Mining and Industrial Advisory Boards. At the Royal Ontario Museum he is a member of the Royal Patrons Circle Advisory Council.

He has spent his career at Hatch, a global consulting engineering and project management group where he has been for 52 years. He has held a wide range of technical, management and board positions, with many years setting up and developing the business in South America, Russia and China.

His first degree was in Mechanical Sciences from the University of Cambridge, followed by a PhD from the University of Toronto. He has over 80 publications and contributions to seven books.