ABSTRACT
The Charoen Pokphand Group, known as the CP Group in Thailand and Zhengda in China, is a multinational Chinese Thai family enterprise. The company began in 1921 as a small seed shop founded by two Chinese immigrants, an uncle and the father of current Chairman and CEO, Dhanin Chearavanont.1 Over the past two decades, the CP Group has expanded its businesses from Thailand to China, throughout Southeast Asia, and into several European countries and the United States. CP has transformed “into a global conglomerate of more than 250 companies, 100,000 employees and sales of US$13 billion a year.”2 It is also one of the largest foreign investors in China. More important, the CEO and senior executives of the CP Group represent a new type of Chinese transnational subject in the twenty-first century: bridge builders.
