Greater China remains one of the world’s most important places to watch how technology, consumer behavior, capital, manufacturing, leadership, and culture evolve in real time.
The 10 Top Voices You Should Follow in Greater China (2026) stand out because their perspectives come from direct experience inside those shifts. They are building AI companies, developing smart mobility, interpreting China for global businesses, shaping cross-border healthcare decisions, advising leaders, and translating changes in markets, finance, supply chains, and culture.
What makes them worth following is not visibility alone. It is the ability to connect what is happening on the ground with what those developments could mean for organizations, investors, professionals, and industries trying to understand Greater China more clearly.
Highlights
Editorial Note:
This feature is independently curated by the NewInAsia editorial team and is not a paid or sponsored listing. Selections are based on publicly available information, primarily from LinkedIn, and consider factors such as expertise, consistency of public contributions, engagement quality, professional credibility, and relevance to the featured topic. This is an editorial selection, not a definitive ranking.
Kai-Fu Lee
CEO, 01.AI | Chairman, Sinovation Ventures
Kai-Fu Lee has spent decades at the center of China’s technology and AI ecosystem. Before founding 01.AI in 2023, he served as President of Google Greater China and held senior roles at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. He also chairs Sinovation Ventures, which manages more than $3 billion across technology investments in areas including AI, automation, enterprise software, and healthcare.
That combination of operating, investing, and building gives Lee a broad view of how AI moves from research into businesses and organizations.
He often examines enterprise adoption, AI-native companies, AI safety, and the organizational changes required to create value from new technology. His perspective is particularly useful because he connects technical progress with the harder question of how companies must rethink how they operate in an AI-driven economy.
Olivia Plotnick
Founder, wai social
Olivia Plotnick is the founder of Shanghai-based consultancy wai social. She has nearly two decades of first-hand perspective on the country’s transformation as a consumer market. With over a decade living and working in China — including extensive on-the-ground fieldwork across 50 emerging cities — she brings a rare, real-time view into how consumer behavior, retail, and policy direction are playing out beyond the tier-one narrative.
Her insights are regularly featured in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Jing Daily. Known for cutting through surface-level narratives, Olivia explains not just what is changing in China, but what those changes signal for global markets. In 2023, she was honored as a Global Women Asia Fellow, recognizing her contributions to bridge-building and leadership in the region.
Xiaopeng He
Chairman & CEO, XPENG
Xiaopeng He has spent more than two decades building technology companies across China’s internet and mobility sectors.
He co-founded UCWeb in 2004 before the company was acquired by Alibaba in 2014. He later led Alibaba’s Mobile Business Group before taking the helm at XPENG, where he has served as Chairman and CEO since 2017.
Under his leadership, XPENG has expanded beyond smart electric vehicles into autonomous driving, humanoid robotics, Robotaxi development, flying cars, and Physical AI. The company has also reached one million vehicles produced and expanded sales into 60 countries and regions.
That breadth gives He a distinctive view of mobility as a convergence of software, hardware, robotics, and AI. He frequently uses XPENG’s own development work to show how autonomous systems and embodied intelligence are moving from concept toward real-world deployment.
Steffanie Yuen
Managing Director, Head of Hong Kong, Endowus
Steffanie Yuen works at the intersection of wealth management, fintech, and investor experience.
Before joining Endowus in 2022, she held senior roles at Value Partners Group and Ant Group, where she worked on financial partnerships across markets including India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea. She also helped establish a joint venture between Vanguard and Ant Group and later served across marketing, investor advisory, and board-office functions.
Today, she leads Endowus Hong Kong, a leading independent wealth advisor and investment platform in Asia, and serves on the board of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong.
Yuen’s perspective centers on how technology can reshape wealth management without losing sight of investor interests. She often discusses long-term investing, conflict-free advice, financial education, and fintech innovation, giving readers a closer look at how Hong Kong’s wealth management ecosystem is evolving. Steffane is also a strong champion of female empowerment, speaking up on and supporting initiatives to foster financial independence and promote women in leadership.
Mark Greeven
Professor of Management Innovation, IMD
Mark Greeven has spent more than 20 years studying and working with companies inside China’s innovation ecosystem.
As Professor of Management Innovation and Founding Director of the China Initiative at IMD, he has worked with companies including Huawei, Alibaba, Ping An, Haier, SF Express, and multinational groups operating across China. His research spans management innovation, AI transformation, business ecosystems, corporate innovation, and industrial development.
He has also built businesses and education programs himself, including scaling IMD China in Shenzhen and launching cross-border programs across several institutions.
That experience gives Mark a useful position between academic analysis and operating reality. He regularly examines Chinese technology companies, AI models, financing, and industrial strategy, translating developments inside China into broader questions about global business, competition, and management.
Miranda Meng, ACC
Founder & Organization and Leadership Consultant, Chapter C Co.
Miranda Meng works on a problem many organizations encounter during transformation: business realities can change faster than the way people lead and work together.
Through Chapter C Co., she partners with leaders and HR teams across Asia, Europe, and the Americas on organizational development, leadership, coaching, facilitation, and team performance.
Across her corporate and consulting career, Meng has lived and worked in four countries and partnered with leaders from more than 30 nationalities. Her earlier in-house experience includes supporting post-M&A reorganization and change management across Foxconn and Sharp subsidiaries.
She often explores the human dynamics behind execution: unclear assumptions, unspoken tensions, changing leadership expectations, and the gap between agreement and action. Her perspective is especially relevant as AI adoption creates new questions about how people, roles, and decisions must change alongside technology.
Davy Shi
Founder & Managing Director, Bridge2Business & ESDTOYS
Davy Shi has spent more than 23 years working directly within China’s manufacturing and sourcing ecosystem, combining extensive hands-on experience in international trade with an MBA from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Through Bridge2Business, he helps international distributors, retailers, and brand owners navigate the complexities of supplier selection, product development, quality control, compliance, logistics, and global fulfillment. His teams in Shanghai and Shantou work across categories including toys, home and garden, sports, and outdoor products.
Shi’s experience is grounded in the operational realities of international trade—not supply-chain theory alone. His MBA training, combined with more than two decades of working directly with manufacturers, suppliers, and international buyers, gives him both a strategic and practical perspective on how supply chains work in the real world.
He regularly connects developments in Chinese manufacturing with changing energy markets, geopolitics, industrial clusters, and global consumer demand. This gives readers a practical perspective on what sourcing from China really requires: not simply finding a lower price, but building reliable supplier relationships, managing risk, maintaining quality, meeting timelines, and navigating the cross-cultural decisions that determine whether a supply chain performs consistently.
Audrey Wang, CFA
Product Specialist, Macrobond Financial
Audrey Wang combines experience in investment analysis, macro strategy, financial data, and content creation.
Before joining Macrobond Financial as a Product Specialist, she spent eight years working at buy-side institutions and nearly four years as a macro strategist. She is also a CFA charterholder and has spent seven years creating financial content.
That background allows Wang to approach markets through both investment judgment and the data used to support it.
She regularly examines cross-asset seasonality, equity-market behavior, portfolio trends, macro developments, and financial-data tools. Increasingly, she also explores how AI can support investment research and analysis. Her perspective is useful because it sits between raw financial information and the decisions professionals make from it, helping readers understand not only what market data shows, but how it can be interpreted more systematically.
Chenchao Liu
Founder & Managing Director, SILREAL GmbH
Chenchao Liu is Founder and Managing Director of SILREAL GmbH, advising pharmaceutical, biotech and medtech companies on China–Europe–US healthcare policy, government affairs and market access.
He has worked with AstraZeneca, Bayer and the German Federal Ministry of Health on China-related policy, market-entry and bilateral programmes.
He is a guest lecturer on doing business with China at the Technical University of Munich and the University of Copenhagen, a World Economic Forum Agenda Contributor, and has spoken on China and healthcare at platforms including EFPIA and BDI. A chemist by training, he works in German, English, and Chinese across European, US, and Chinese regulatory and commercial environments.
Eric X.D. Tan
Founder & Principal — A&R, Music & Cultural Strategy, SWAY
Eric X.D. Tan has spent more than 25 years working where music, games, entertainment IP, and Greater China intersect.
His career includes senior roles at Riot Games, Sony Music Entertainment, and Electronic Arts, alongside founding Fifth Journey and his current businesses, SWAY and Futurebound Private. At Riot Games, he led music strategy and partnerships across titles including League of Legends, VALORANT, and Arcane, working with artists and creative projects spanning Asia and global audiences.
That background gives Tan a perspective on cross-border culture that goes beyond translation or distribution.
He explores how music, gaming, entertainment IP, technology, and cultural strategy travel between China and international markets. Whether discussing Shenzhen, AI attitudes, A&R, or creative collaborations, his focus remains on how global ideas cross borders without losing the cultural detail that makes audiences care.
Greater China Is Becoming Harder to Define — and More Important to Understand
The 10 Top Voices You Should Follow in Greater China (2026) reflect a region where technology, business, markets, and culture are evolving at the same time — and increasingly influencing one another.
AI is converging with mobility, robotics, finance, and the way organizations work. Manufacturing remains connected to global supply chains, while consumer behavior and financial services continue to evolve within distinct local ecosystems. Beyond individual markets, healthcare, investment, and creative industries are also navigating increasingly complex cross-border realities.
That makes Greater China difficult to understand through any single industry or narrative. These voices offer something more valuable: perspectives shaped by working inside the changes themselves.
Together, they provide a closer view of a region whose next chapter will be shaped not only by what it builds, but by how its ideas, technologies, businesses, and culture connect with the wider world.
Highlights
Read the Chinese article here.
