China Notepad

Welcome to my notepad. I write about my work, about the thought leaders I meet, and about the ideas that catch me along the way.

Henrik Bork

Nice to meet you. I am Henrik Bork, the founder of Asia Waypoint, a consulting and research agency in Beijing.

22 April 20207 min read

Exit from China after corona? Think again.

The coronavirus crisis reopened the debate about relying on China. Has the time come for manufacturers to leave?

15 April 20202 min read

How fast can the Chinese automobile industry recover from the coronavirus shock?

18 September 20196 min read

What the Arthur W. Page Society’s report on the chief communications officer means for companies working in China.

27 August 20197 min read

What makes Masayoshi Son tick, written with Steffan Heuer for Roland Berger’s magazine Think:Act.

16 August 20197 min read

Buying market share by burning investors’ money, with the bike-sharing company OFO as the cautionary example.

28 November 201810 min read

Mitsuru Kawai, head of manufacturing at Toyota, explains why the company called workers back to jobs the robots had taken.

30 August 20182 min read

A conversation in a Beijing teahouse with Gong Yu, whose video platform iQIYI wants to be more than China’s Netflix.

28 August 20184 min read

In a Tokyo development lab, Groove X keeps a robot called Lovot under wraps. It is built to be liked.

27 August 20183 min read

Two hours in Qingdao with Zhang Ruimin, the founder of Haier, who once handed his workers a sledgehammer.