Two years ago, 33-year old Liu Lei gave up a comfortable career managing investments in a clean energy company in Shanghai to move back to her hometown of Chengdu, the capital city of China’s southwestern Sichuan province.
Unlike Shanghai, a global financial centre and home to China’s biggest stock market, Chengdu was not a bustling finance hub, but Liu did not mind. She had moved back to Chengdu to start her own company Luccroi, a platform providing artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain solutions for the financial industry.