Belgian Lao Zhu, the “old matchmaker” who has been rooted in China’s ports for ten years

In his view, compared with the west, in China, people are always willing to test the waters, often by trial and error, sometimes even costly errors, and they will quickly move on to new ideas. The use of big data for example has little or no hurdles here, while in Europe people struggle with data ownership and other legal constraints.

Especially in Shanghai, this energy and entrepreneurship are worth learning from. For example, in the shipping and logistics industry, people seem to be ready 24/7 to serve their customers, which may be unacceptable for westerners.

Shanghai has a very good context not only in universities but also the Shanghai shipping institute, both of whom work very hard on exploring what those new technologies can potentially bring to the shipping industry. “Actually it’s a little bit challenging, because the shipping industry is actually one of the last industries to embrace computers. It is a very traditional industry. Now we see all these new things coming at us, the internet of things, big data, blockchain technology, etc.”

Lao Zhu, who is very optimistic about China, looks forward to strengthening cooperation in the field of new technologies. He praised the fact that Chinese e-commerce leads the world and Shanghai's electric vehicles are the fastest in the world, and the two sides can also communicate in the fields of environment, safety and chemicals.

Lao Zhu spoke at the special symposium of the Shanghai CPPCC in 2018, which was themed around promoting the “Shanghai culture” brand and building a superior global city.

On his desk, there is a picture showing Antwerp Mayor Bart De Wever's visit to Shanghai in 2014. He introduced that this was the most proud event among all the exchanges he has promoted.

Lao Zhu admits that actually his initial work was limited to promoting the port of Antwerp to Chinese professionals, introducing European port logistics, helping Chinese companies and institutions optimize product logistics and warehousing solutions. However, later he took the initiative to undertake many bilateral cultural exchange projects and has devoted a lot of effort, but has never been tired of it.