New Money: The women entrepreneurs of China

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A renowned global credit card company launched the “Global Women Entrepreneurship Index” in 2017, aiming to measure the progress and achievements of women entrepreneurs in 54 countries and regions. The index shows the percentage of women entrepreneurs reached 30.9 percent in China, eighth in the world. Meanwhile, women entrepreneurship index in the country ranked 31st worldwide at 61.3 percent.

Gui Bowen, CEO of BGG, earned her master’s degree in Carnegie Mellon University in the US and later worked for BlackRock asset-management company as a project manager.

She joined mia.com, an online platform that sells imported maternal and child products after her return to China and was doing good in its international business. Gui was an advocate of environmental protection and had been helping Chinese companies to get financing from US investors when she was working at Wall Street. That's why she decided to start up her own waste paper recycling business in China.

Another Chinese woman entrepreneur is now the CEO of VIPKID, a startup company based in Beijing. It offers online English training service by connecting over 30,000 quality teachers from the US and Canada with over 2.6 million Chinese kids.

Mi Wenjuan, CEO of VIPKID, was an English enthusiast when she was only seven years old. However she dropped out from school after she found out that she could not handle her math class.

She told her mother that her school life has come to a dead-end and she would have to find another way for her future career. She taught herself English and found it was great fun to learn the language.

So at the age of 15, she joined her uncle's English training class and became a part-time teacher there. Years later, she decided to start up her own company and continue her career in English training. And that's how VIPKID company came into being.

Being a woman doesn’t make running a business easier or harder. Courage, endurance and persistence, and a little bit of luck are the correct ingredients for success. But one thing is for certain, the new generation of Chinese women entrepreneurs are a force to be reckoned with.