Ian Stones

Name: Ian Stones
From: Manchester
Living in: Beijing

“I laugh when I recall predictions we made in 1979 about what China would be like  in 1989. How wrong we were! We’re getting better, but we’ve still been wrong ever since”.

In 1978, as a young biochemist, Ian Stones came to Beijing as an exchange student for a year to study the language, but never left. For the first 20 years, he pioneered in the petroleum, aviation, banking, pharmaceutical and automotive sectors. For the last 10 years he has been working in M&A, crisis management and economic research.

In 1979, when Ian began working for an oilfield equipment and services agency, there were no foreign representative offices, no apartments, no working visas and travel to other cities was only allowed with a special travel permit. Everything was a challenge. As China gradually begun to open up, what was particularly exciting was working on many new projects that had never been done before. These included the first offshore production sharing contracts, the first aircraft lease, the first technology transfer, the first whole plant sale and the first joint venture.

In the mid 80’s Ian’s firm was acquired by Citibank and the business expanded into the automotive and aviation sectors. In the early 90’s, as the Pharmaceutical Division Director of Pfizer, Ian established medical and pharmaceutical marketing operations in Dalian, then later as Managing Director of General Motors Asia, he was instrumental in winning the joint venture in Shanghai and establishing branding and distribution footprint for future growth.

The first major crisis Ian experienced was in October 1983 when the Glomar Java Seas drillship sank in a typhoon south of Hainan. For several days, Ian flew missions on a British Airways Sikorski S61 on lease to BP, which was mobilized to support the search and rescue operations.  There were many lessons from that disaster. Since then, he feels he has experienced just about every kind of crisis imaginable.

Over the 30 years in the country, Ian developed many long lasting friendships and has enjoyed witnessing the changes in perceptions and thinking. The changes stimulated a deep interest in the development of institutions and values. He now participates in several joint research programs examining economic development and the changes in values over time. His greatest stimulus is joint work with several think tanks on the latest topics of high interest.

Ian sees the last 30 years as only the first half of China’s reforms and looks forward to the changes coming over the next 30 years.