The Newly Awakening Entrepreneurship Drive Among Young Chinese Students

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Yuanyuan Zhou, a professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) and a serial entrepreneur herself has witnessed from the front lines how much more entrepreneurial young Chinese students in the United States have become.

When Zhou started her first company in 1999 as a Ph.D. student at Princeton University, she was unusual among her peers. So far, she says, only two of the 20 or so Chinese Ph.D. students at Princeton she got to know while she was a student there have created their own companies. By contrast, Zhou says, seven of the 19 Chinese Ph.D. students who have graduated since she became a professor have done so. Last year, Zhou even offered a seminar in entrepreneurship at UCSD. About half of the 25 students who took the class were Chinese.

Nevertheless, read more about how China is trying to convince more young Chinese entrepreneurs to return to China after studying in the United States.