Who’s Hu

China’s tycoons: their stories in two minutes

Xu Rongmao
Xu Rongmao
Dec 4, 2009 (WiC 41)

Xu Rongmao was born in 1950 in Fujian province. His father graduated from a medical college and his mother was an obstetrician. During the Cultural Revolution, Xu was sent to the countryside to be a barefoot doctor. Then he moved to Hong Kong in ...

Wang Jianlin
Wang Jianlin
Nov 27, 2009 (WiC 40)

Wang Jianlin was born in Sichuan in 1954 and, like his father before him, joined the army at 15. After an 18 year military career, he was demobilised and became a civil servant in Dalian – a city regularly voted the most ‘livable’ in ...

Zhang Jindong
Zhang Jindong
Nov 20, 2009 (WiC 39)

Zhang Jindong was born in 1963 and studied at Nanjing Normal University. In 1984 he abandoned his course in Chinese literature to try his hand at business. He worked in air-conditioning, on the installation side, and after six years had saved ...

Guo Guangchang
Guo Guangchang
Nov 13, 2009 (WiC 38)

Guo Guangchang’s parents wanted him to become a village school teacher. He had different ideas, leaving home to study at provincial high school. His ambition paid off, as he won a place at Fudan University in Shanghai to study ...

Ma Huateng
Ma Huateng
Nov 6, 2009 (WiC 37)

Ma Huateng was born in 1971 in Guangdong province and went on to study computer science at Shenzhen University. He joined China Motion Telecom as a software engineer, becoming a director of software development. Big ...

Zhou Houjian
Zhou Houjian
Oct 30, 2009 (WiC 36)

Zhou Houjian was born in Shandong province in 1957 and graduated with a degree in radio engineering. In 1982 he joined the Qingdao TV Factory where the 25 year-old soon became one of the firm’s acknowledged technology experts and problem ...

Lu Guanqiu
Lu Guanqiu
Oct 23, 2009 (WiC 35)

Lu Guanqiu is arguably modern China’s ‘debut’ entrepreneur, and in keeping with his stature as the nation’s first capitalist is a very rich man. He’s worth Rmb18.5 billion ($2.7 billion), according to the 2008 Hurun wealth ranking. But ...

Li Dongsheng
Li Dongsheng
Oct 9, 2009 (WiC 34)

Born in Guangdong in 1957, Li Dongsheng became a technician with TTK Corp. In 1985 TTK was renamed TCL and in 1987 Li was sent to visit Philips headquarters in Europe. He was shocked to see that the Dutch firm’s R&D department had more than ...

Zhang Yin
Zhang Yin
Oct 2, 2009 (WiC 33)

China’s richest woman, Zhang Yin was born in 1957 in Heilongjiang province. The daughter of a lieutenant in the Red Army, she started out in accounts in a state factory. In the early 1980s she moved to a joint venture paper firm in ...

Liu Yonghao
Liu Yonghao
Sep 25, 2009 (WiC 32)

Liu Yonghao’s life story seems to match much of China’s own transition in recent years. Born in 1951 in Sichuan, he was 14 when the Cultural Revolution began. He became a Red Guard, even travelling to Beijing to hear Mao speak. His ...

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