Taiwan and Hong Kong

David O’Rear moved from his native California to Asia in 1980, first to Taiwan for further language study. After completing his Master’s Degree in Asian Studies at the University of California, he returned to Taiwan for a year of market research. In 1984, he accepted a position in Hong Kong with Business International analyzing political, economic, and regulatory trends. Amid his rise to Regional Economist, Asia-Pacific, the company was acquired by The Economist Group. After 18 years (1984-2001) covering the broad Asia-Pacific region, David in 2002 accepted the post of Chief Economist at the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce.

At the Chamber, David managed overall economic policy with an emphasis on taxation, laws and regulations, and major industrial sectors (shipping, transport, real estate, infrastructure). While much of the work involved policy lobbying, he also conducted hundreds of seminars on an extremely broad range of topics of interest to the business and academic community: government finance, labor law, monetary policy under a fixed exchange rate, GATT and the WTO, balance of payments crises, stock market regulation, competition policy, and infrastructure investment priorities, to name but a few. He was responsible for drafting and presenting many of the Chamber’s submissions to government on these and other issues. His responsibilities included daily interaction with C-level executives in the public and private sector, elected politicians, and the media.

In both of his prior roles, David spoke at or chaired hundreds of conferences worldwide, including in 15 nations in Asia, as well as Australia, Europe and the US. He has appeared in print or electronic media regularly, both as a commentator and in the op-ed format. Guest lecturing at the university level has been a regular feature of his career.

After 13 years advising business and government on a range of policy issues, David resigned from the Chamber in September 2015 to follow his wife as she moved on to an exciting new phase of her career, in London. He then spent time distilling his 30+ years of experience into a book on Hong Kong political challenges and prescriptions for the way forward. After three COVID-related years looking after family in Florida, they subsequently moved to San Francisco, and now Santa Rosa.

David has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

He is married to Bonny Fay Landers.