Bridge Builders: Belt and Road

Margaret Chen: Making Waves While Bridging China and Spain

By Chen Pan, Ai Yan, Gary Parkinson

I still compete – I compete in every stage of my life.
Margaret Chen

Starting from a swimming pool in the 1970s, Margaret Chen never expected to make a splash in the global business world.

As a successful businesswoman, Chen made her name for herself in both China and Spain. She is the founder of China Club Spain; CEO of Optimus Horizon, a company dedicated to building bridges between China and Spain; and was listed as one of the 100 most influential Chinese in the 2022 book Models of Power.

But she has always said that she has simply been riding the waves of the era.

Margaret Chen is working at home. /CGTN Europe

Margaret Chen receives the 2023 Casa Asia Award by the Asia Europe Foundation in Spain. /Chen Hong

A Life in Three Different Countries

Chen Hong – the alternative name Margaret Chen came later – was born in Shanghai in the 1960s.

She found a talent for swimming in her teenage years, winning a national championship.

"I was the team leader of the swimmers," Chen recalls, smiling. "And I still compete – I compete in every stage of my life."

Indeed, it was a very short period of her life, but the athletic experience built up her personality with traits including perseverance and decisiveness.

An example of the latter came in 1978, when China's reforms and opening-up policy incorporated resuming the Gaokao, or national college entrance exam.

Grabbing her chance, Chen attended Shanghai Jiao Tong University for bachelor's degrees in computer science and trade, later pursuing her studies in industrial engineering at the Tennessee Tech University in the United States.

It's not easy to enter Jiao Tong University through Gaokao even today, let alone during that time.

"It's the best engineering university in Shanghai, and there are only a few women studying engineering – we usually have only two or three female students in each class," she says.

And she experienced her first ever cultural shock after traveling from Shanghai to a university, headquartered in Cookeville, Tennessee – population around 30,000.

"There are crowds of people wherever you go in Shanghai, and now I came to a country where there were more cows than people," she laughs.

After graduation, she worked for the software company ACS Technologies, participating in the building of the first electronic commerce platform. The first online supply chain platform for automobile manufacturing companies, it was later widely applied by wholesale markets and government departments.

After working in the U.S. for seven years, Chen – who had married a Spanish man – decided to move to Spain.

It's hard for an athlete to retreat when faced with difficulties. Even with an unknown destiny waiting ahead, Chen decided to explore Spanish society to find more opportunities.

And despite the culture shocks, Chen discovered that her athletics-boosted character traits and U.S.-gleaned working experience could be put to better use there.

Bridging the Chinese and Spanish Telecommunication Industries

Suddenly the country became quite important because of the population and the growth of the market.
Margaret Chen

Chen started in a familiar realm, e-commerce, as consultant and trainer. From there she moved to Telefónica, Spain's biggest telecommunication company and the world's third-largest at the time.

Working hard in a then male-dominated industry, she earned respect – and again, her career was boosted by China's development.

In 1978, China's opening-up allowed Chen to see a wider world by traveling and studying overseas. In 2001, her home country joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) supercharged her career opportunities.

"Suddenly the country became quite important because of the population and the growth of the market," she tells CGTN. "Telefónica started to look towards China for cooperative opportunities."

While the Spanish tech giant looked eastwards, its Chinese peers were also seeking global opportunities. One of them was China Netcom – now China Unicom, the country's second largest telecommunication company.

With her trilingual abilities and cultural background from living in three countries, Chen stood out. Nominated as the director of the Asian market, she established Telefónica's first branch in Beijing.

Under her efforts, Telefónica became China Unicom's largest foreign investor, with the total input reaching $3.5 billion as the two sides signed deals covering equity swapping and strategic partnership.

Embrace the New Trends

as China Grows

More than ever, we need to speak out.
Margaret Chen

After so many years of living and working overseas, the project pulled Chen back to China. She realized that as her home country continued to grow, there would be increasing exchanges between China and Spain. She has helped many Chinese companies to settle in Spain, including tech giant Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE.

"Huawei came here after they explored Latin American countries and found out that Spain is the bridge for their businesses there," said Chen. "Huawei later became an employer of more than 1,000 employees here, and they contributed to the job market."

In 2010, she established China Club Spain, which gathers most of her influential compatriots living in Spain, aiming to provide more opportunities for Chinese people seeking for cooperation in business. In that role, she has helped many other Chinese companies to settle in Spain.

Chen hopes that her experience of getting started in a new country could help the incomers – and as China develops, she would love to promote the positive spirits and influences she sees in her Chinese peers.

On the Spanish side, her efforts have been highly valued. She was listed as one of the most influential Chinese professionals by Spain's newspaper El País, and was given the 2023 Casa Asia Award by the Asia Europe Foundation in Spain – the first Chinese individual in 30 years to receive the award.

As China launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Chen saw new opportunities again.

"In the very beginning, we saw the project focused more on infrastructure, and now it has shifted to more diverse realms such as renewable energy," she says – and once again, she decided to seize the opportunity.

Decades ago, she brought investment from Spain to China; now it's the other way around. "I'm now helping lots of investment from China to Spain to build a solar power plant," she says. "That's what Spain needs."

The buffeting brought by geopolitical turbulence only makes Chen more determined to do her job.

"More than ever, we need to speak out," she says. "We need to let people know about the development of China, the contribution of China to the rest of the world – and we need to promote win-win cooperation between China and Spain.

"I can help people from both countries to understand each other, to know what they need. We need to build the bridge together, to work together and to get a better life together."