Crossing the Straits

Xu Tao, a 28-year-old from Taiwan, started a business with his mainland classmate Bao Guanyu in Beijing.

Xu had launched businesses in Taipei three times during his university years but none proved successful. When he was deciding whether he should stay in Taiwan or go to the United States after graduation, his classmate Bao, who was on an exchange program at his university, told him about shared bikes and food delivery services on the mainland and presented him with a third choice—going to the mainland.

Their company is an online job-hunting platform called HR Tech China. In the beginning, the company had difficulties finding investors and suffered capital chain rupture. However, Xu didn’t give up. During the