He says that the firsthand research he conducted provided a solid foundation for his academic achievements, such as winning the Sun Yefang Economic Prize in 1995 and in 2007.

Hu might have continued to study rural economies for longer if he hadn't had "another encounter with history" at Beijing Railway Station one day in 1989, the year large groups of laborers from China's rural hinterlands began their mass migration to the country's major cities to find work.

"It was when I saw hoards of migrant workers burdened by bags flowing out of the station, that I thought it was time for me to divert my attention toward studying urbanization and city planning," he recalls.

He soon applied to join a postgraduate program jointly offered by the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany where his main area of research centered around urban-rural planning.

Similarly, as China faced serious bouts of inflation in 1993, Hu chose to enter the World Bank's Chinese branch the following year to study how macroeconomic control methods can be used to reduce inflation.

"I tried to steer my career according to the changing tides of how the country develops," says Hu. "I want to ride the waves of our days."

In his bid to keep up with the times, Hu spent a busy decade between 1997 and 2007 engaging in a range of commercial and academic enterprises. While setting up a successful financial consulting business and an information technology startup, he also obtained his doctorate in economics from the Witten/Herdecke University in Germany and studied e-commerce.

"My extensive experience in these fields allows me to easily arrive at a common language with experts from a variety of different disciplines and gather them together for the think tanks at the Belt and Road School," says Hu. "And I hope I also can offer useful suggestions to my students."

Encouraged by Hu, Aliu Omotayo Sikiru, a Nigerian postgraduate student at the Belt and Road School, plans to set up an online platform which connects China's top e-commerce portals with customers in his homeland.

The 28-year-old, a former college teacher in mathematics and economics, says the idea came to him when the master's degree program provided him with the opportunity to visit Chinese companies and make new business contacts.

Studying at the BRS also allowed him to meet classmates and high-ranking professors from all around the world and develop a clearer insight into global economics and trade, he adds.

xingwen@chinadaily.com.cn