Team

Jarno Syrjälä is the Chief Executive Officer of the China Office of Finnish Industries. Before this position, he worked at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland for several years. He is a former Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China (2017–2021). Mr. Syrjälä was born in Turku in 1964. He holds a M.Ec. from the University of Vaasa.

Linda Jakobson is Senior Advisor at the China Office of Finnish Industries. She has been a student of Chinese politics and the foreign and security policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the past 35 years. She has lived and worked in the PRC for a total of 22 years; her last appointment in Beijing was as Program Director for China and Global Security for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

Linda currently divides her time between Finland and Australia where she is the Founding Director and Deputy Chair of China Matters, an Australian policy institute. A Mandarin speaker, she is the author of five books about the PRC and East Asia. She has served as a policy advisor on China to governments in seven countries. She is internationally known for her publications about the PRC’s foreign policy, cross-Strait relations, and the PRC’s Arctic ambitions.

Arttu Säynäjäkangas is Analyst at the China Office of Finnish Industries. He has 3 years of experience working in the People’s Republic of China in the export business and has been a close follower of the PRC political system for a decade. Arttu speaks Mandarin and holds a Master’s degree in sociology with a focus on economic sociology and political science. His key areas of interest are the urban-rural divide, environmental and social contradictions of Chinese modernization, and digital reform.