Lars Ellström came to China in the early 1970s, as one of then very few Europeans who studied the Chinese language and strived to understand the country, which at that time was largely secluded from the outside world.  Since then his life and career have been linked with China. From 1979 to 1982 he was a diplomat at the Swedish Embassy in Beijing, helping to form Sweden's China strategy and acting as the Swedish-Chinese interpreter for meetings between Swedish top level officials and Chinese leaders like Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang.  Then in 1982 as a banker Lars Ellström set up the first Nordic bank representative office in China, the Svenska Handelsbanken Beijing Representative Office.  From 1992 to 1995 he worked in Vietnam with bank reform and enterprise development for the World Bank and SwedeCorp. Later on he worked for another Swedish bank, Swedbank, as area manager for the Greater China region (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan).

After retiring from Swedbank in 2004 Lars Ellström has been providing advice to various companies and individuals with regard to business and cultural exchange between China and Sweden.  In 2005 he set up SkyEast International Consulting Ltd to leverage his more than thirty years of China experience, by helping European businesses come to China and assisting Chinese companies to go to Europe.

Lars Ellström speaks fluent Chinese, English, and Swedish (mother tongue) and also some German, French and Vietnamese.