Creating China's Green Social Network

In late October Yihua sent a team, including Mr. Steel and Mr. Shoer, to southwestern China's Yunnan province. They did a site survey for the Linden Centre, an American-owned lodge dedicated to preserving local cultures and architecture. Linden hopes to expand in an environmentally responsible way that also preserves the heritage of nearby people groups. 

Yihua is also exchanging leads with lawyers, accountants and other service providers. They will feed into its network, which will remain at the core of the business even as it grows.

“As this network evolves ... the amount of skills and strategies that we can implement keeps growing," Mr. Steel said. Already, the group has worked to address challenges in the solar and semiconductor industries and has helped companies that clean up waste water, a major problem in China. 

In its 12th five-year plan enacted this year, the Chinese Communist Party has highlighted clean energy as a strategic industry, both to meet its ravenous appetite for power and to fuel its export engine, said Johnny Browaeys, a veteran environmental consultant who has lived and worked in China for eight years.

Yihua hopes to be a connecting point for foreign firms looking to tap a market Mr. Browaeys believes will eventually lead in green innovation out of necessity. To deal with its huge environmental problems, China is “opening its arms” to new technologies while demand is slinking along in the U.S. and Europe is mired in financial woes, he told GlobalAtlanta by phone.

“A lot of solutions for problems in the old markets will be found in China,” and foreign companies that thrive will be those who make connections with trusted local partners now, said Mr. Browaeys, who recently left construction and services firm CH2M Hill's China office.

The 42-year-old Belgium native developed Yihua's social business model on a sixth-month sabbatical and is serving as its unpaid chairman while transitioning in his career.

He noted that the network is becoming a conduit for finding qualified employees in China. While the difficulty protecting intellectual property tends to grab headlines, foreign companies rate hiring and retaining employees as the top challenge to their China operations, according to an annual survey by the US-China Business Council.

“We don't mind to be an employment pipeline,” Mr. Browaeys said. 

After all, it fits with the group's overarching purpose. 

“Our philosophy is that everyone who engages or links with us should benefit from doing so,” he said.

For Mr. Shoer, that was reason enough to move across the Pacific.

“I just really believe in it,” he said.

Visit www.yihua.asia for more information or contact the team at info@yihua.asia.

Alex Shoer didn't mind working in finance, but after traveling the world, the 24-year-old was hungry for a career that would more directly impact lives.

The seed was planted in Tanzania, where the Alpharetta native and University of Georgia finance major participated in a service-learning project. Africa's poverty was striking, but just as disturbing were the dire environmental conditions in which people endured it.

In October, Mr. Shoer's desire to help small businesses and improve the environment led him to Shanghai. He spent his first few weeks sleeping on the couch in a friend's 17th-floor apartment.

On clear nights, he could see the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Shanghai's quirky but unmistakable architectural icon, glimmering between distant skyscrapers. As the sun went down, jackhammers reminded him that the city's progress never sleeps, even when he needed to.

Despite the spartan digs, Mr. Shoer hadn't renounced his possessions or embarked on a Buddha-like crusade to change the world by embracing solitude.

Quite the opposite: he was on a quest to connect people – from seasoned executives to college students – through a “social enterprise” that joins individuals, companies and organizations to tackle environmental issues in China, the epicenter of some of the world's direst pollution problems.

Yihua is a network of like-minded professionals, a sort of LinkedIn for those who lean green by interest, calling or profession. It sprang from a series of networking events called Green Drinks launched by Irving Steel, Mr. Shoer's fraternity brother.

Mr. Steel, also 24, bought a one-way ticket to China in 2009. The international affairs major landed a job at a Georgia-based flooring company in Shanghai and began carving his niche there, pushing sustainable development while getting LEED certified. Green Drinks now averages about 150 attendees per event, and the movement is spreading to other Chinese cities and throughout the Internet via email and social media. The mailing list has surpassed 10,000 recipients.

So far it has been all about building the network, but Mr. Shoer and other partners want to take Yihua to the next level, creating a company that is profitable but motivated by good instead of gain, they told GlobalAtlanta in an interview in Shanghai.

Doing so will require balancing the need for profit with the desire for impact, Mr. Shoer said.

“You want it to be really socially minded but you have to realize that we don't want to be asking for donations to make this happen,” he said.

Yihua will use partnerships within its network to keep prices low for valuable services like market-entry studies and energy-efficiency advice. It plans to operate with minimal overhead by relying on student volunteers working under the direction of more experienced experts. 

With a bustling economy and a young, energetic population, Shanghai has been a good place to find both, especially at this promising time for China's green industry.

“It's amazing how people just want to do new things and completely just knock it out of the park and change the world," Mr. Shoer said. "The government is supporting (environmental development), the young people want it , the businesses need it and it was kind of like, 'Wow, this makes sense,'” Mr. Shoer said.

The group expects to work in a variety of settings, from corporate skyscrapers to countryside factories.