Chris Brown

Chris Brown

Chris Brown has a Masters’ degree from Cambridge University in Oriental Studies with Economics. He has more than 30 years’ experience providing leadership, strategic direction and high-level management support to complex political, legal and economic cooperation programmes in Europe and Asia.

After 5 years working for UK and German companies establishing ventures in China and elsewhere in Asia, Chris worked for the EU running a major programme addressing structural reform in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China between 1995-2001 as a strategic part of China’s accession to the WTO.

From 2002 to 2004, Chris was Operations Director for the EU, based in Thailand, promoting information technology partnerships between Europe and Asia in the eGovernment, Transport, Agriculture, Environment, Education and Health sectors, particularly in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

Chris subsequently managed the EU’s Information Society programme in China from 2004-2010, conducting research on e-Commerce, Telecoms, e-Governance, Data Protection and Information Security with the State Council, Ministry of Industry & Information Technology (MIIT) and other Chinese government agencies.

From 2012-2017, Chris was Director of the EU’s Policy Dialogues with China, to implement economic-related strategies across multiple sectors. Some key milestones achieved are the establishment of the EU-China Broadband Expert Working Group, the High-Level Urbanisation Partnership, the Green Smart Cities initiative, the China Europe Water Platform, Green Transportation and the EU-China Think-Tank Dialogue.

Chris worked in the European Commission HQ in Brussels from 2017-2019, advising EU policy-makers on Investment Climate in emerging economies, notably in subSaharan Africa. From 2019-2024, Chris was Director of the China-UK Business Environment Programme (BEP) with the British Standards Institute (BSI), promoting international standards in eCommerce, Green Smart Cities, Good Governance and Building Intelligence Modelling (BIM). He is currently BSI’s Regional Director for the UKASEAN Economic Integration Programme, working on the rollout of the Digital Toolkit, standards in Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) and Net Zero.

Chris is also a Member of the World Internet Conference (WIC), Vice Chair of the Data Working Group and Panellist for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Working Group. He has been a Board Member of the UK’s National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education with a mandate to foster research partnerships between UK and China.

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  • Organization
    World Internet Conference (WIC)
  • Profession
    Vice Chair of the Data Working Group
Related sessions
In person
9 July 2025
09:00 - 12:15
EST - New York
CST - Beijing
PST - Los Angeles
AWST - Perth, Australia
Amidst accelerating advancements in AI and growing disparities in digital...