Those personal connections can eventually move beyond schools and universities into broader forms of shared experiences.

Today, Boston-based financial services company State Street has an important operations hub in Hangzhou. The story began not with a business deal, but with personal friendship and academic exchange.

In the 1980s, Zhejiang University faculty members formed a friendship with Jerry Cristoforo, then a Boston-based technology executive. Cristoforo later joined State Street, bringing those long-standing ties into a new chapter of cooperation between the university and the company.

In 2001, building on those earlier ties, State Street and Zhejiang University jointly established an office in Hangzhou with four professors and 15 students.

Over the following two decades, the collaboration expanded beyond software development to include talent cultivation and community engagement.

The partnership demonstrates how universities, businesses and communities can work together to create lasting value across cultures and generations.

Liu Guozhu, director of the Center for American Studies at the School of History of Zhejiang University, said that people-to-people contact has played an important role in the development of China-US relations.