My contribution to a board
A board taking its own brand abroad usually hears about overseas markets through two kinds of paper: a sales forecast and a legal opinion. I can add a third kind, about how buyers and partners abroad actually decide and what it costs to earn their trust. I have spent twenty-five years in industrial robots and motion control, first selling a foreign brand to Chinese plants and then building a Chinese brand among German, Turkish and Mexican integrators. I know what a distributor agreement tends to leave out, how a partner reads a price cut, and why an export forecast built on trade-fair leads is usually optimistic.
I would also bring the habit of putting the losing option into the paper. Each decision I am known for at Tingsong, from the European price corridor to the Turkish channel change, reached our Strategy Committee with the alternative set out at full strength and its advocates named. A committee that has seen the strongest case against a recommendation decides faster and revisits its decisions less often.
Chinese listed companies organise much of their board work through special committees for strategy, audit, nomination, and remuneration and appraisal. I would be most useful on a strategy committee, where overseas expansion, channel structure and brand risk belong, and on a nomination committee for a company appointing its first overseas general managers. The audit committee's convener is expected to be an accounting professional, and I would not seek that seat. In many founder-led companies the chairman convenes the strategy committee, and I would lead it only if the board wanted that, after a year as a member.
Finally, I bring experience of disagreeing with a founder without damaging the relationship. Our chairman and I have differed over fair stands, the Turkish distributor and a sponsorship he liked. Each time I wrote the disagreement down, priced it and accepted the board's decision. An independent director needs the same discipline, with less information and more distance than an executive has.
Judgement in practice
01Refusing a 'made in Europe' line for a configuration centre
In 2025, while preparing the Hungarian centre proposal, our European sales team asked to market robots configured and tested there as European-made, because several automotive and public-sector buyers prefer local supply. The arms, reducers and controllers would still come from Nanjing and Changzhou. I took advice from our trade counsel, who explained that origin for customs purposes turns on where the last substantial processing takes place, and that configuration and testing would almost certainly not qualify. I wrote into the committee paper that we would describe the site as a European stock, configuration and test centre and nothing more, even though that weakened the sales case. The Strategy Committee accepted the wording. On a board I would ask the same two questions of any claim that carries legal weight abroad: who has checked it, and against which rule.
02Putting the whole cost of the Turkish exit in one paper
When I proposed ending the Turkish master-distributor agreement in 2022, the first draft from our overseas finance team showed the parts buyback as an inventory transfer and the lost revenue as a forecast adjustment. Read separately, neither looked large. I rewrote the paper so that the buyback, the new Bursa site and twelve months of lower revenue appeared in a single table, RMB 55 million in total against the base plan, with the legal advice on the notice period attached. The Audit Committee later asked how the buyback had been valued, and the answer was already in the paper the board had approved. The lesson I would take to another board is that a channel decision is also an accounting decision, and that directors should see its cost before they approve it rather than in the next quarter's variance report.
03Declining a sponsorship the chairman favoured
In 2022 our chairman was offered a three-year shirt sponsorship with a European football club at about RMB 30 million a year, and he was keen; other Chinese industrial brands had signed similar deals. I recommended against it in a paper to the executive committee. Our buyers are a few thousand integrators and plant engineers; the sponsorship would reach millions of people who will never specify a robot; and the same money would fund two application centres and a year of parts stock in a new region. I also set out the case for it fairly, including recognition among plant owners and pride among our own staff. The chairman accepted the recommendation after a month, with some reluctance. As a director I would test brand spending the same way, by asking who the buyer is and whether the money reaches them.
My first year on a board
My first year would have three parts.
Before the first meeting I would read the last three annual reports, the board and committee minutes I am permitted to see, the company's agreements with overseas distributors and agents, and every price list it has issued abroad in the past two years. Price lists and distributor agreements tell a director more about an export strategy than the strategy document does.
In the first six months I would travel. I would visit at least two overseas markets with the local team, meet two or three distributors or partners without a sales manager in the room, and spend a day in the company's own service or parts operation. I would also ask the board secretary to take me through the company's disclosure practice, because a director who talks about markets abroad must know exactly what has and has not been published.
For the rest of the year I would contribute mainly through the strategy committee, and I would hold myself to one rule: every question I raise should be answerable with evidence the company already holds or can reasonably collect. At the end of the year I would ask the chairman and my fellow independent directors which of my questions changed a decision and which merely added work, and I would adjust accordingly.
Conflicts and their management
Three kinds of conflict matter in my case, and I would deal with each before accepting a seat.
The first is commercial. I would not join the board of a robot maker, an automation-component supplier, a machine-tool builder or a system integrator, nor of any company that is a material customer or supplier of Tingsong. I would also decline a company whose overseas partners overlap heavily with ours, because our integrators sometimes sell other makers' products and I would learn things in one boardroom that matter in the other.
The second is financial. I hold Tingsong shares under its restricted share incentive plan, and I would disclose that holding together with any relationship between the company and Tingsong's founder or major shareholders.
The third is time. Tingsong's board calendar, its annual results and the overseas trade-fair season set firm limits on my diary. I would agree meeting dates a year ahead and reserve twenty-five days, including preparation and site visits. If a conflict emerged after I joined, I would tell the chairman at once, leave the room for the relevant item and resign if the conflict became permanent. None of this would happen without the prior consent of Tingsong's board.
My independence statement
I am a full-time executive of Tingsong Robotics and hold its shares under the company's restricted share incentive plan. I would consider an independent seat only at a company with which Tingsong, its founder and I have no business, family or financial relationship of substance, and I would disclose every relevant fact before an approach went further. Whether I satisfy the independence requirements of the CSRC's rules and of the relevant exchange's listing rules for a particular company is for that company's board to judge on what I disclose.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Tingsong Robotics Company Limited
Board of directors: annual overseas plan, export price policy and brand risk
April 2021–present
Presents the overseas marketing plan and the export price corridor each year; not a director of the company and holds no vote.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Tingsong Robotics Company Limited
Strategy Committee of the board: overseas market entry, the Turkish channel change, application centres and the proposed Hungarian configuration centre
2021–present
Writes and presents the committee's papers on overseas channels and sites, attending for those items only.
Reported to a committee
Tingsong Robotics Company Limited
Audit Committee: distributor-termination costs, the parts buyback and the TS-450 retrofit provision
2022–2023
Reported with the CFO on the estimates behind the Turkish exit and the retrofit programme; not a committee member.
Member of a committee
Qinhuai Automation Exporters' Forum
Market-access committee of a regional association of automation exporters
2022–present
One of nine members; reviews the forum's guidance to members on export documentation, product-safety conformity and pricing conduct. An industry body, not a company board.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian register, kept under Indian company law, for people seeking independent seats on the boards of Indian companies. I live and work in China and am seeking a seat at a Chinese or Hong Kong-listed company, so the databank does not apply to me and I have not registered with it. The requirements that do apply are the CSRC's rules for independent directors of listed companies, the listing rules of the relevant exchange and whatever training the exchange expects of new directors.
- Listed-company governance sessions for senior managers during Tingsong's preparation for listing in 2019 and 2020
- Study of the CSRC's 2023 rules on independent directors of listed companies with Tingsong's board secretary
- Every Strategy Committee meeting since 2021 at which overseas business was discussed, as the presenting executive
- A director-development programme at Mochou Business School in 2025, covering board duties, related-party oversight and committee practice
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | Strategy committee, after a full year as a member and only if the board wishes |
|---|
| Ready to join | Strategy committee · Nomination committee · Sustainability or ESG committee |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 25 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Pumps, valves and flow-control equipment sold abroad · Building products and heating equipment moving into export markets · Agricultural and speciality machinery · Household appliances moving from supplying other brands to selling their own overseas
- Company type
- A-share or Hong Kong-listed manufacturer with revenue of roughly RMB 2 billion to RMB 15 billion, often founder-led, whose overseas sales are growing past a fifth of revenue and which has no commercial relationship with Tingsong
- Company stage
- Three to six years into an overseas expansion, when the first distributor agreements are up for renewal and the board must choose how much to invest in service and partners abroad
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for one independent directorship at an A-share or Hong Kong-listed manufacturer with revenue of roughly RMB 2 billion to RMB 15 billion, outside robotics and automation, that sells its own products abroad or is moving from supplying other brands to selling its own. Pump and valve makers, building-products and heating companies, agricultural and speciality machinery builders and household-appliance makers building their own brands overseas all fit that description. Such companies usually reach a point, a few years into an overseas push, where distributor contracts come up for renewal, price pressure at home spills into export plans and the board has to decide how much to invest in service abroad. That is where I could help.
I would join the strategy committee and a nomination committee, and I would expect to spend my first year mostly listening. The CSRC's rules for independent directors of listed companies set tests of independence, limit the number of listed boards on which one person may serve as an independent director and expect real time spent on site. I would take one seat only, for as long as I remain an executive at Tingsong.