Ivan’s story

Ivan Melnikov

My connection with China goes back to 1996, when I started learning Chinese as a schoolboy. Since 2005, I have lived and worked in China full time. Over those years I went from a student working shifts in a restaurant to someone who builds technology parks and organizes top-level visits. This is how it happened.

2005–2011

University and first steps in business

After finishing school in Blagoveshchensk, I enrolled at a Russian university and immediately took a leave of absence to study in China. After a year of language training in Harbin, I entered Dalian University of Technology to study business management. I studied alongside Chinese students, not in an international group but in a regular class where everything was in Chinese.
China was opening up to me from every side. I traveled a lot through the mountain areas of Liaoning Province and took up photography and filmmaking seriously. I worked in a restaurant, interned at a Chinese IT company and did freelance interpreting for clients from Russia. That is also when the first sourcing orders from China came in, small ones at first, from people I knew.
2011–2013

Shanghai and a master’s degree

I won a Shanghai Government scholarship with full funding for a master’s program at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and moved to Shanghai.
By then my circle was entirely Chinese: students, professors, colleagues. I studied economic sociology, took part in joint projects with American and French universities in Shanghai, and helped run AIESEC and the university cycling club.
I cycled more than 7,000 kilometers across China. Before graduating, I went on an expedition around the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal with Chinese friends. All this time I kept working with private clients on sourcing equipment, components and raw materials in China.
2013–2014

A corporate job and my first company

After my master’s, I wanted experience in a large corporation. I interviewed with the recruitment firm Michael Page and with a Microsoft subsidiary in Shanghai. I chose Microsoft and spent a few months selling enterprise software, and realized it was not for me.
I registered my first company in Shanghai, put my client base in order and carried on with my trading business.
2014–2019

My own business and consulting

I was invited to join a Chinese Fortune 500 corporation as a consultant and started working on investment projects, while still serving clients in equipment, components and raw materials. It was a fascinating period: I saw large-scale international and Chinese business from the inside.
I handled communication between owners of Forbes-listed companies in China, Russia and other countries. I took part in top-level events and negotiations and oversaw several business lines for Chinese and international companies. Everything I learned went into building my own company.
2020–2023

A major construction project through the pandemic and sanctions

It all started at CIIE 2019. The task was to bring a partner’s companies to China and set up production and sales on the Chinese market. It was a complex, ambitious project that drew on everything I had learned in my years in China.
I organized a PR campaign in China’s official media, the partner’s participation in the Hongqiao International Economic Forum and meetings with China’s leadership. The project was signed in the presence of the Mayor of Shanghai and received full government support.
We met a Chinese co-investor, chose a plot of land 100 kilometers from Shanghai, registered a joint venture, bought the land at auction and started design work, drawing the future buildings by hand with Chinese architects. Then came the general contractor tender and construction, which lasted until the end of 2023.
2023–2025

Launching the technology park and relaunching my own company

Once construction was finished and the state commission had accepted the building, we completed the engineering preparation, bought the equipment, set up full-cycle production shops and launched the technology park, which makes commercial water equipment. For two more years I ran the joint venture, while gradually relaunching the Russia business of my own company after China lifted its COVID restrictions.
The project was built, launched and handed over to the investor at the end of 2025. Along the way I went through fire and water, quite literally.
In the same period, my own company ran its first business missions and hosted the first delegations after China reopened its borders. Our guests included major Russian state-owned and private companies, government delegations and tech companies. We also relaunched the trading business: after a break, the first shipments of raw materials and equipment from China went out.

The technology park story
2026

A full restart of Asia Business Hub

I began flying to Moscow more often and giving master classes at Russian universities: RUDN, Moscow State University, HSE, St. Petersburg State University and RANEPA. I brought my experience and contacts into one system that works for our clients in consulting, trade and business missions.

Why I do this

China is my second home. Shanghai is a city I know, understand, accept and love with all my heart.

The goal of everything I have done and keep doing is to bring China and the rest of the world closer together, and to clear away as many stereotypes and distortions about each other as possible.

People from the Western world and people from China have far more in common than it seems from the outside. I will be glad to share this experience with our current and future partners.

Ivan Melnikovfounder of Asia Business Hub