Danish Companies in China during Covid-19: Staying Afloat and Post-pandemic Tendencies

This chapter set out to capture how the Danish companies operating in China experienced the impacts of COVID-19 and what lessons can be distilled from these experiences in the post-COVID-19 world. From February to May 2020, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with top executives of Danish companies in China to achieve the above objectives. The insights from the interviews were complemented by a survey carried out in May 2020 among the members of the Danish Chamber of Commerce in China. The findings of this investigation provide insights into the specifics about the challenges of COVID-19 for Danish companies in China. Furthermore, we also learn about the efforts undertaken by the companies to counteract any negative impacts and to build a foundation for a robust and stable business operation in the post-pandemic world. On the one hand, the empirical foundation of the chapter based only on the insights from the Danish business community in China exposes the findings to the challenges of generalizability. On the other hand, the delimitation on the narrow and specific demographics of Danish companies in China provides a unique perspective, which has not been captured in other contributions on the subject.