Ctrip CEO Jane Sun: ‘my career is a reflection of China’s 40 years of development and opening up’
- After studying overseas and cresting the Silicon Valley wave, Jane Sun returned to China, where she now helms the nation’s largest online travel agent and advocates for gender equality
Women are supposed to hold up half the sky in China, but Jane Sun Jie is one of very few to have reached the stratosphere.
“My career is a reflection of China’s 40 years of development and opening up,” says Shanghai-born Sun, who is one of the few female chief executives in the country.
Born during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) – she won’t say exactly when – Sun was fortunate to receive a good education.
“When I was a student at Peking University, China had just opened its doors and Deng Xiaoping allowed students to go abroad,” recalls Sun, who departed for the University of Florida on a scholarship. “I was among the first [mainland Chinese students] to go to the United States to study.
“After I graduated, I went to Silicon Valley, which was booming thanks to the AOLs and Netscapes. I started to work closely with internet companies because my husband [John Wu Jiong] joined Yahoo in 1996, as the chief engineer who developed the search engine.”
In 2000, when the dotcom bubble burst, Wu received a call from a friend of the couple, Jack Ma, who offered her the role of first chief technology officer at Alibaba.
