There was no direct flight from London to Sydney in 1957.
John Quelch, born in London to a nurse and an RAF officer, was six. His father, Quelch says with a hint of intrigue, was a decorated officer trusted to handle himself in remote locations. This time, it was Australia, which took three days and nine stops on a four-propeller plane. Quelch rattles off the layovers: Paris, Rome, Athens, Beirut, Baghdad, Karachi, Calcutta (now Kolkata), Singapore and Darwin, where Quelch and his father ate breakfast at the airport, which was a shack by a runway.
“Guy brings a breakfast menu,” Quelch recalls enthusiastically. “At the top of the menu, steak and chips. I’m so glad we came to Australia.”
By early childhood, Quelch was comfortable anywhere in the world. By his teenaged years, he was devouring The Economist, The New Statesman, The Spectator, New Society – any such highbrow publication he could get his hands on. College was Oxford, followed by two master’s degrees from Harvard. Then, as an academic, he shifted between business, nutrition and public policy, forever hunting and then researching unoccupied niches. Quelch rose to administrative positions, working as dean of three business schools on three continents, most recently the University of Miami’s business school. He holds the CBE – the British honor just below knighthood – and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
Today, he is executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University. As second in command at Duke’s Chinese campus, Quelch – who took office in January 2024 – occupies a new and exciting niche. He is not just a university leader, but also its ambassador to alumni, businesses and government entities in China. He makes it sound as easy as chatting with a neighbor.
“My policy is, I get on my bicycle, metaphorically, and just go and visit [stakeholders],” he says.
As a joint venture between Duke, Wuhan University and the city of Kunshan, DKU is inherently international. It’s substantially smaller than “Big Duke” and younger, having celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2023. It boasts an outsized impact, says Bonnie Liu, Quelch’s chief of staff. There is a substantial population of Duke alumni in China, she explains, and it’s easy to draw 100 or 150 to alumni events in Beijing or Shanghai. To them, DKU has become another Duke-affiliated site to visit. At Quelch’s side, Liu experiences firsthand what being a leader at DKU is like. She also witnesses Quelch in ambassador mode.
“He’s got a magic,” she says. “People like talking to him.”
The China-U.S. relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world, Quelch says. He had worked in China before, as dean of the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai from 2011 to 2013. The Chinese economy has changed since then, he says, while China-U.S. political relations have grown more fraught. Each side overstates the other’s weaknesses. Westerners, Quelch says, overstate China’s economic weaknesses while disregarding its dedication to the production of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles.
Quelch knows the international challenges and stakes, yet sit down with him and he is calm, kind, soft-spoken and patient. This is how he builds his bridges – in person, in conversation.
“Chinese culture is kind of reserved and not as expressive as American culture. The inner circle is not that open to new people,” Vincent Wang M.B.A.’22 says. “But he can just break in.”
Wang, the World Economic Forum’s business engagement lead in greater China, calls it “John’s Law of Gravity.” Quelch is a social magnet, Wang says, drawing people in. Wang has seen Quelch hold his own with high-profile Chinese artist Yuan Xikun. And he’s seen him answer complex questions on CCTV-2 – China’s equivalent to the BBC – with no evident preparation.
“John is always ready,” Wang says.