My contribution to a board
A board that owns physical assets in China's power system, or depends on them, increasingly needs someone who understands how electricity is now priced. I have spent twenty-six years on the grid side of that question: planning transmission, connecting wind farms in the curtailment years, building storage inside a cell maker and running a company whose revenue moved from regulated leases to a provincial spot market in under two years. I can read an energy contract, a battery warranty and a station's trading record, and I can tell a board which numbers in an energy plan are physics and which are assumptions.
My second contribution is judgement about industrial risks that are rare but severe. After our 2023 fire I learnt how to build a safety system that starts with suppliers, and how a board should hear about safety: through leading measures such as rejected batches and overdue inspections, not only through incidents. Many listed industrial companies now install batteries, hydrogen equipment or high-voltage systems at their sites, and few of their boards include anyone who has stood inside a burnt container.
Third, I have governed between very different owners. Qianyue's board joins a founder, a provincial state investor, growth funds and two independent directors, and our hardest decisions, from the 2022 investment to contracts with our state shareholder's companies and the withdrawal of our listing application, turned on protecting minority shareholders without paralysing management. That experience suits a listed company with a controlling shareholder and public investors to protect.
I am not an accountant. Mainland rules expect a listed company's audit committee to have a majority of independent directors and to be convened by one who is an accounting professional, and I would not seek that role. I can be a useful audit committee member on impairment, warranty and capital-expenditure judgements, and I would hope to chair a strategy committee after a year if the board wished.
Judgement in practice
01Withdrawing a listing application
We filed an application to list on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in June 2023, after two years of preparation. By early 2024 the pace of new listings had slowed sharply, our system prices were falling and the reform of storage revenue was being discussed openly in the industry. Our sponsors advised staying in the queue, and our growth investors wanted a listing in any case. I recommended withdrawing, because I could not tell investors with confidence what our station revenue would look like in two years, and a prospectus that implied I could would have served them badly. The board agreed in March 2024. Employees still ask me when their shares will be liquid, and I owe them a better answer than I have. On another board I would ask the question I asked ours: can management describe the risks in this document without hoping they will not happen?
02A shareholder's requested discount, priced by independent evidence
In 2023 a generating company owned by Mingquan, our largest shareholder, asked to lease 300 MW of our capacity at 25 per cent below what other developers were paying, describing it as reasonable support within an investor's portfolio. Mingquan's three directors on our board supported the request. Under the policy agreed after the 2022 investment, contracts with Mingquan companies are decided by the directors Mingquan did not nominate, on an independent price benchmark. I commissioned the benchmark, which supported a discount of about 5 per cent for a contract of that size, and recommended that price. The other directors approved it, and the generator signed after six weeks. A conflict rule protects minority shareholders only when someone puts proper evidence in front of the directors who apply it.
03A dividend reduced before the downside arrived
After a strong 2023, our founder and growth investors proposed a dividend of RMB 300 million in the spring of 2024. Our project loans carried cover ratios at each station, the price war was beginning to cut our system margins and lease renewals were uncertain. I recommended RMB 60 million and showed the board our cash position under a case in which lease income fell by a third. The board approved RMB 80 million. When the 2025 reform did reduce lease income, the cash we had kept paid for the trading desk and the redesign of two stations without new borrowing. As a director I would ask to see the downside case before any distribution is approved, not after.
My first year on a board
My first months would be spent at sites before boardrooms. I would ask to visit the company's largest operating assets and at least one place where something has gone wrong, and to read the records of recent safety events and near misses alongside three years of board and committee minutes. I would meet the external auditor, the head of internal audit and the board secretary separately, and ask each what the board hears least about.
Throughout the year I would serve as a committee member and ask questions in writing before meetings, so that management can answer with evidence rather than on the spot. I would keep a note of each question and whether the answer changed a decision, and at the year's end I would share that note with the chair and ask whether my contribution was worth the time the company spent on it. I would not seek to chair anything in my first year.
Conflicts and their management
Three groups of companies are closed to me while I lead Qianyue. The first is our own industry: cell makers, storage integrators, inverter makers, storage developers and any generator or grid business that buys storage capacity. The second is our shareholders' businesses: any company in the Mingquan group, any portfolio company of our growth investors and anything connected with our founder's family. The third is our suppliers and customers at home and abroad.
If a company I served later began dealing with Qianyue or one of those groups, I would tell its chair the same day, stay out of every discussion of the relationship and offer to resign if it was likely to continue. I would also ask Qianyue's board to approve the seat in advance, and I would keep my thirty days by fixing the year's meeting calendar before accepting, since our own results and budget cycles fall in the same months as most listed companies' meetings.
My independence statement
My employer is Qianyue, where I am chief executive and hold about 2.1 per cent of the shares through the employee shareholding platform. I would accept a seat only at a company that does no business with Qianyue, Mingquan Energy Investment Group or our growth investors, and with which I have no family or financial tie. Before any appointment I would list my shareholdings, directorships and the businesses of our shareholders, and leave the judgement of whether I meet the independence requirements of the company's listing rules to its board and its advisers.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | Strategy committee, after a year as a member · A safety or sustainability committee, where a board has one |
|---|
| Ready to join | Strategy committee · Audit committee, as a member · Nomination committee |
|---|
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Qianyue Energy Storage Co., Ltd.
Board of directors (nine members): budgets, capital raising, station investment, the listing application and its withdrawal
January 2021–present
Executive director since becoming chief executive; votes on all matters except those in which I am conflicted, such as my own pay and shareholding.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Qianyue Energy Storage Co., Ltd.
Audit committee, formed in 2023 and chaired by an independent director with an accounting background: impairments, warranty reserves and contracts with shareholders' companies
2023–present
Present the warranty-reserve method, station impairment tests and every related-party paper; not a member of the committee.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Wenlan Power Cell Co., Ltd.
Strategy committee of the board of a Shenzhen-listed company: storage division plans and capacity investment cases
2015–2018
Presented the division's annual plan and three investment cases each year; not a director.
Served as a director
Qianyue International (Hong Kong) Limited
Board of the wholly owned export holding company
2021–present
Director in an executive capacity, approving export contracts above set limits, parent guarantees and the subsidiary's accounts.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 30 days per year
- Current directorships
- 2
- Sectors
- Ports, logistics and heavy transport moving to electric power · Chemicals and industrial gases with large electricity demand · Heavy machinery and industrial equipment makers · Water and environmental utilities
- Company type
- An A-share or Hong Kong-listed company outside batteries, storage, inverters and power generation, with large physical assets and growing exposure to electricity markets, and no business relationship with Qianyue or its shareholders
- Company stage
- An established company changing how it buys or uses energy, or one recovering from a safety or operational event that has raised the board's need for technical challenge
The seat I am pursuing
I am pursuing one independent directorship at an A-share or Hong Kong-listed company whose operations depend on electricity but which does not make, buy or sell storage: a port or logistics group electrifying its fleet, a chemicals or industrial-gas producer whose power costs decide its margins, a heavy-equipment maker, or a water utility. These companies face questions I know well: how to buy power in markets that are changing, how to manage high-consequence technical risk and how to treat minority shareholders when a state or founding shareholder controls the board.
I would join the strategy and audit committees and, after a year, chair the strategy committee if the board wished. Mainland rules allow an independent director to serve on up to three domestic listed boards and expect substantial time on site at each; while I remain a chief executive I would take only one seat, so that thirty days is genuinely available.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian register for people seeking independent directorships of Indian companies, and it does not apply to the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong companies whose boards I would join. I have not registered and record that status only because this page asks for it. For a mainland listing, the requirements that matter are those of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the stock exchanges on independence, training and time commitment, which a nominating board would check against my disclosures.
- Five years as an executive director of Qianyue, on a board with founder, provincial state-owned, growth-fund and independent members
- Preparation of a listing application in 2023 with our sponsors and lawyers, including our related-party and committee structures
- Study of the CSRC's 2023 rules for independent directors of listed companies with our board secretary
- Executive MBA, part-time, at Lingpu School of Management, completed in 2017