Zhou Wei, HYSTA's former president, delivered opening remarks at HYSTA's 2013 annual conference at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco on Saturday. [Yu Wei/China Daily]

"Robin said he felt like coming home," Zhou said, adding that people leave HYSTA, then come back and make contributions.

Zhou said HYSTA has many similar stories. For example, Ken Xie, founder and CEO of Fortinet Inc, and Deng Feng, founding managing director at Northern Light Venture Capital, have both served as presidents of HYSTA.

Many successful programs have also been initiated by HYSTA, such as its popular China Partnership Program, which provides frequent receptions and recruiting events for delegations from China, leads business trips to China and helps entrepreneurs connect with investors.

This year, HYSTA also started a new CEO training program with Legend Star. "The program has received a great response and many participating CEOs said they have benefited significantly from the program," Zhou said. "We will have more such programs in the future.

"There are more funding, technology parks, entrepreneurship expertise and stronger government support in China, where I see great potential," he said. "In the US, we see more Chinese companies coming to Silicon Valley to invest and to seek cooperation opportunities."

David Wolf, a managing director of global China at Allison+Partners, a San Francisco-based international PR agency that has been one of HYSTA's sponsors before, said the reason he showed up at today's conference was to get back in touch with HYSTA, as his company wants to increase its involvement with the organization.

"My job is to help US companies earn trust in China and help Chinese companies earn trust with America's audience," Wolf said. "When my clients come to a problem, if we can't solve that problem right away, we have to know somebody who can, and HYSTA was the resource that we can rely on."