My Encounter with Belt and Road
Jason Inch
I came to China in 2003, as an exchange student at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai. Though it was only for six months, my experience left a deep impression and, after I had returned to Canada and graduated with my MBA, I decided to return to Shanghai.
My career path wasn't a standard one for an MBA at that time. I soon found my place as an independent business consultant and later joined Honeywell for a two year project. This was a turning point in my life as one of the assignments I had at Honeywell was to study sustainability in China, and I found that as early as 2007, China was already making some impressive investments in wind energy and other cleantech.
This inspired me to learn more and in 2009 I traveled through places like Yunnan and Sichuan looking for answers about the future of sustainability in China. That trip led me through Kunming and was the basis for my story about the Belt and Road Initiative. At that time, Yunnan was suffering from drought, and I walked through the parched fields and empty reservoirs in its countryside, where I met a goat herder and I stopped to talk to him for a while.