In China’s booming technology sector women play a bigger role than men – more than 55 per cent of tech start-ups are founded by women, according to the country’s State Council, compared to 22 per cent in the US. Here is a look at some of the women leaders in the industry.
Jean Liu, 40, president of Didi Chuxing, China’s dominant ride sharing firm
Within two years of joining Didi in 2014, Liu and Didi CEO Cheng Wei had succeeded in pushing the global ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies out of China’s market. Now Didi is one of the world’s most valuable private start-ups worth US$56 billion, processing more than 25 million bookings a day. Liu, daughter of Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi, was born in 1978 in Beijing. After her Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Peking University she continued further study at Harvard in the US. Before joining Didi Liu worked at Goldman Sachs Asia for more than a decade.
Peng Lei, 46, chairwoman of Ant Financial, parent of mobile payment app Alipay
One of the earliest 18 co-founders of Alibaba Group where she started in human resources, Peng became CEO of Alipay in 2010. It has since grown into China’s biggest online payment service with more than 520 million users. Peng resigned as Ant Financial CEO in 2016, but stills serves as chairwoman of the US$70 billion unicorn. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.