Hongjun Zhang, Ph.D. is a Partner in the China Team at Holland & Knight. Dr. Zhang helps corporate and other institutional leaders and management personnel succeed in China by minimizing client government relations and compliance risks.
Dr. Zhang works on a broad range of government relations and compliance matters in China. Dr. Zhang is perhaps best known in China and elsewhere throughout the world for his work in the product regulatory, environmental, health and safety areas. More specifically, Dr. Zhang's practice focuses on materials restriction and labeling, environmental compliance planning, product border restrictions and registrations, chemical registration and management, complex government negotiations, rulemaking advocacy, project approval and permitting, facility environmental, safety and health impact assessment, air pollution prevention and control, waste and raw materials import and export, hygiene standard compliance, food product approvals, workforce and labor management, regulated materials transport management, and biotechnology regulation.
Dr. Zhang is admitted to practice in New York and China. He is not admitted in the District of Columbia.
Prior to entering private practice, Dr. Zhang was Legislative Director in China’s National People’s Congress. In this position, he was responsible for drafting national laws and policy documents and overseeing national and local government implementation and enforcement of the laws. In his early years in the Chinese government, Dr. Zhang also served as Program and Compliance Officer in China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). During his many years in the Chinese government, Dr. Zhang worked on legal issues with numerous agencies in the Chinese government other than SEPA, at the national and local levels, including the Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the State Food and Drug Administration, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, National Development and Reform Commission, and Ministry of Communications (China's transport regulatory authority). Dr. Zhang retains the honorary title of counsel to a number of Chinese agencies. Dr. Zhang’s past work includes drafting official Chinese government documents for World Bank projects, as well as influential policy-setting documents such as China’s National Report on Development that was submitted to the United Nations, China’s National Investment Report, and China’s Eighth Five-Year National Environmental Protection Plan.
Dr. Zhang has been involved in the drafting and/or implementation of numerous Chinese laws, including laws affecting product design, historical contamination of soil and groundwater, chemicals management, air pollution control, food and beverage hygiene, product quality, land-use, water resources, manufacturing processes, safe transport, and product design.
Dr. Zhang has extensive experience on both the industry and government side of compliance and business-risk management issues facing companies investing in the challenging China market. As counsel to the corporate China Roundtable, Dr. Zhang routinely brings this experience to bear on emerging client challenges associated with auditing, ensuring facility and supplier compliance with corporate and Chinese standards, and China's rapidly evolving laws affecting laborers, products and raw materials.
Dr. Zhang was the only lawyer who was invited by President Clinton to participate in his Environmental Round Table in Guilin, Guangxi Province when the president visited China in 1998. Dr. Zhang received his legal training at American, Harvard, New York and Yale universities in the United States, Uppsala University in Sweden, Nijenrode University in the Netherlands, and Chiang Mai University in Thailand. He also served as a residential scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy (1998), and a visiting scholar and coordinator for China projects at the Center for International Environmental Law. Dr. Zhang also holds a senior research fellow position at Harvard University.