"China is pressure and opportunity at once. Knowing how to make both work has become central to industrial leadership."

Industry, read from both sides.

I have spent my career running industrial businesses on both sides of the Europe–China dynamic. That vantage point shapes how I run them and how I read the decade ahead.

The forces reshaping European industry are structural, not a passing storm: relentless cost competition, faster cycles, the erosion of differentiation. Much of the pressure originates in a Chinese industrial system I have operated inside. That same system is also where much value is being made: innovation that has moved from fast-follower to frontier, scale, and, increasingly, capital. China is pressure and opportunity at once. Knowing how to make both work has become central to industrial leadership.

I am currently President, Rubber Reinforcement at Bekaert (the Group's largest business, close to €2 billion in revenue and more than 11,000 people), and a member of the Executive Committee. Across more than a decade, I have carried full P&L responsibility at scale, in CEO and EVP roles across Europe and China.

Profitable growth is the through-line of every role I have held: creating a smart cities business at Schneider as urbanisation became a mega-trend; building a China-for-global R&D centre from scratch; winning share in flat markets through sharper segmentation and business-model redesign. Much of that instinct was formed in China, where trends turn faster than plans, and the rewards go to those who see them early and act with agility. I also repair what is broken: turning losses to profit, resizing footprints, rebalancing toward the East, restoring discipline. The growth instinct must stay alive in a turnaround as much as in a boom, to find the next source of strategic advantage. And through all of it, the people doing the work get as much of my attention as the numbers on the page.

I serve as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of SEFAR AG and am an INSEAD-certified international director. I am currently completing a Doctorate in Business Administration at CEIBS, researching AI in demand forecasting.

In Chinese I am known as 徐红艳 (Xu Hongyan) and am also known as Annie Xu.

I work in Chinese, English, and German.

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