Superman Li Jiacheng

Li Ka-shing, Asia's richest man, occupies a special place in the memory of Chen Yulan's family. (Li Jiacheng)

Chen Yulan, 60, now sells newspapers and magazines at a tabloid at 661 King's road, North Point.

North point is a jungle consisting of reinforced concrete buildings located near the northeast coast of Hongkong island.

It used to be the site of Li Jiacheng's Cheung Kong Plastics Factory (Li Jiacheng later became the most powerful tycoon in Hongkong).

In this factory and a sister factory near Chai Wan, Li Jiacheng employed 7000 workers, three classes a day and 8 hours per shift.

To a certain extent, this is a family handicraft industry.

Workers from nearby low-income neighborhoods will come to Li Jiacheng's factory to pick up a bag of plastic flowers separated from flower petals (144 flowers) and then sew them together at home.

Like the young rich in the future, many workers come from Eastern Guangdong and speak Chaozhou dialect, a dialect different from Cantonese.

Cantonese was the general language of Hongkong as a colony.

Li Jiacheng recalled: "in order to get extra income, many families will sew plastic flowers as outsourcing work and get them done at home."

Li Jiacheng, who was deeply occupied, refused to be interviewed for this article, but answered the questions raised by the reporter in writing.

"This is a common practice at that time, because by outsourcing, manufacturers can overcome the restrictions on the site."

Chen Yulan's mother-in-law once worked part-time jobs for Li Jiacheng.

Chen Yulan recalled: "the remuneration is not very high, only a few HK dollars per package, but the consumption level of that year is very low, and people have not much else to do.

(Li Jiacheng) was not rich at that time.

People just think of him as an ordinary factory owner. "

After 60 years of entering the manufacturing industry, Li Jiacheng's fortune is very rich, with about $23 billion in wealth. Forbes magazine ranked him ninth in the list of Asian riches and the world's richest list. Li Jiacheng's fortune is very low.

(Forbes ranked the world's fifth richest India lahmi &#8226, Lakshmi Mittal) in the European and Russian rich list, because he put his headquarters in London.

At the top of the Changjiang center in Central Business District of Hongkong, Li Jiacheng's commercial interests are in the city that nurtured him.

His main investment institutions are Cheung Kong Holdings, Hutchison Whampoa and Li Jiacheng foundation, Li Kong Shing Foundation.

Li Jiacheng has promised to hand over his 1/3 fortune to the Li Jiacheng foundation.

According to incomplete statistics, Li Jiacheng's large assets in Hongkong include: 14 of the 24 berths at the Kwai Chung terminal (according to the throughput calculation, the Kwai Chung wharf is the second largest pier in the world); second of the second real estate enterprises and telecommunications companies in Hongkong; one of the two leading companies in the Hongkong supermarket and the pharmaceutical industry; and an electric power company providing electricity to Hong Kong Island.

Li Jiacheng's second son Richard Lee (Richard Li) also controls Hongkong's largest telephone and broadband network through PCCW, as well as a Hong Kong Economic Journal, a small but influential Chinese financial newspaper, Hongkong.

The Li family is so influential in Hongkong that some people will ask jokingly whether it is possible to live in Hongkong without a life of Li family (at least at retail level).

The answer is possible, but the premise is that the person is ready to move away from Hong Kong Island or prepare for a life without electricity.

If Li Jiacheng's success is confined to the locality, he will still be a super rich, and will still give a lot of inspiration to the mainland of China, raising Hongkong and giving birth to his wealth and influence.

According to Forbes, as a city with only 7 million people, Hongkong has 26 of the 946 billionaires in the world, and this proportion is very high.

These people control assets worth 121 billion 500 million US dollars.

Li Jiacheng's business journey with Hongkong's economic growth in the past 60 years has gone hand in hand: from plastic flowers and toys to real estate development, and then to global expansion in the late 1980s and 90s.

Alan Alan &#8226, chairman of Hasbro, the chairman of the Li family toy company, said: "the toy industry at that time needed injection moulds and rotational moulds of (plastic factories)" at that time, "&#8226", "Alan".

HASBRO has won Li Jiacheng's contract for making G.I. Joe dolls and other toys.

Hassenfeld witnessed the development of the Li Jiacheng business empire since it first came to Emperor Dao 661 in 1969.

"Jiaching almost regarded me as a member of the family."

He taught me how to operate the injection molding machine, "he recalls.

"Jia Cheng even took me to some land auctions to teach me.

I remember him saying, "don't raise your hand.

´ Jiacheng has a formula that he believes.

He never liked to be in debt. When he took part in a bid, his bid would never be higher than a certain price.

Li Jiacheng, who plans to make the mold, is also ready to break the mold. This is the difference between him and other Hongkong tycoons, and also makes his story more instructive.

Unlike others, Li Jiacheng built a real international empire through Hutchison Whampoa, especially in the port, retail, energy and telecommunications sectors.

His investment also shows that he is an Anglo American.

Last year, revenue from Europe accounted for 45% of Whampoa's total revenue, compared with 17% in Hongkong, 15% in North America and 9% in mainland China.

In February of this year, the group estimated that its British business was worth 14 billion 500 million pounds.

Li Jiacheng said to the Financial Times: "there are several criteria that are important to us when deciding priorities (investment) venues: laws and regulations, ensuring political stability of investment, loose business environment and good tax structure.

The British policy undoubtedly provides all these characteristics.

Hutchison Port Holdings is the largest port company in the world and has 257 berths in 45 seaports.

Hutchison Whampoa's global port expansion really began in 1991, when it entered the Port of Felixstowe, the largest container port in the United Kingdom.

Hutchison and Hutchison Whampoa has the largest health care and beauty retailing network outside the United States.

Hutchison Whampoa and Li Jiacheng share a 72% stake in Husky Energy, which has the world's richest oil sands reserves.

Hutchison Whampoa has a wide range of Telecom assets, including Garner, Israel and Southeast Asian operators, as well as 3G networks in the UK and Italy. But in the eyes of investors and analysts, 3G business has become the Achilles' heel of the group and is still suffering serious losses.

A person with close ties with Li Jiacheng said: "he is willing to believe that the future will be different from the past -- and will bet accordingly.

He likes to look forward, and there will be significant changes in gambling, just like 3G business. "

Li Jiacheng, the core team of Mr Yu, helped Li Jiacheng manage his vast empire under the help of a small international management team.

In Hutchison Whampoa, its core circles include Huo Jianning, group managing director (Canning Fok), group finance director Lu Falan (Frank Sixt) and Deputy Group Managing Director Hu Mufang (Susan Chow).

Together with the chairman, the "royal forest army" held a "shareholders' conference call" on investment and disposal decisions.

Unlike most other Hongkong tycoons, Li Jiacheng has provided his staff with generous salaries and retained them as directors and consultants after they retire.

But Hutchison Whampoa's tightly managed and pro parent management structure also has its own weaknesses, including the exhausting schedule of Li Jiacheng's core circle.

Huo Jianning told Hutchison Whampoa's mid year briefing that he spent a long winter in London, "doing what he did 20 years ago" - the "detail management" of the troubled 3UK subsidiary.

Huo Jianning is also responsible for selling Hutchison-Essar to complex negotiations with Vodafone.

Hutchison-Essar is Li Jiacheng's mobile phone subsidiary in India.

Li Jiacheng is good at identifying trends and "loyalty to others," which is also rewarded by people around them, "said a close relationship with Li Jiacheng.

"As time goes by, the structure of Hutchison Whampoa will change and must change.

Its foundation is personal relationship and trust.

It's a strict family business, but there's nothing wrong with that. "

For many of Li Jiacheng's admirers, he is an outstanding businessman and a gentleman with fantastic skills to grasp all the opportunities from the real estate market fluctuation cycle in Hongkong to the global telecommunications industry.

Li Jiacheng's past record has proved that he has a great understanding of the market, "said Lord Patten.

"He is absolutely very good at identifying trends - investing at the right time - whether in 1980s in Canada (Heskey), in the Thatcher era (Thatcher) in the British port, or in the 1990s mobile phone business.

Peng Dingkang served as the last governor of Hongkong from 1992 to 1997.

Given the fierce opposition of Hongkong business circles to his piecemeal democratic reforms, he is unlikely to be Li Jiacheng's admirer.

Li Jiacheng's great commercial achievements mainly came from two pactions, one of which was his investment in Heskey in 1987, and the other was he sold the British mobile phone company Orange to German company MannesMann (Mannesmann) for 14 billion 600 million US dollars at the height of the technology cycle in February 1999.

The orange deal helped Hutchison Whampoa achieve a record annual net profit of US $15 billion, which can be said to be the peak of Li Jiacheng's career.

He has a nickname in Hongkong: "Superman" - nothing is more suitable for describing him.

The influence of his father is the father of this Superman tycoon, whose father is a teacher.

In 1940, when the Japanese army advanced to southern China, he fled to Hongkong with his family.

But the war also followed: in 1941, Japan occupied Hongkong.

Li Jiacheng's poverty-stricken father became a lowly company clerk and was suffering from tuberculosis and unable to afford the proper treatment.

A brief account of this year's magazine published by Hutchison Whampoa company magazine describes the impact of father's experience on young Li Jiacheng.

Li Jiacheng was also infected with tuberculosis.

"This allows Li Jiacheng to believe that money can shape human dignity," the article says.

"Money begins to connect directly with life itself...

Become a measure of personal value, a key to freedom and independence.

In the early years of Li Jiacheng, money was almost a substitute for religion.

"This is a story from poor to rich, mainly driven by his relationship with his father and his love for his father," Lord Peng Dingkang said.

"He felt his duty to take care of his family.

When it comes to family, he is always full of affection. "

To a certain extent, Li Jiacheng's honesty and sincerity attract the Lord Peng Dingkang's charm of Li Jiacheng, no matter his friends or enemies, he thinks he has such qualities.

Those who are attracted to him will describe him in terms such as "respect" and "respect for others".

He said gently that his politics are not always the same as mine, "said Lord Peng Dingkang, who was once rejected by the business community.

"But he would not shout too confidently that he would never cross the border to find words or titles that could please China.

In my view, this shows that he can find a balance between his (business) interests and the dignity and honesty of intellectuals. "

Lord Peng Dingkang added: "I am sure that Li Jiacheng prefers to live in a more democratic rather than a less democratized Hongkong."

Li Jiacheng asked whether he thought that in his lifetime he could see all the 60 seats of the chief executive of Hongkong and the Legislative Council to achieve full democratic elections. The 79 year old tycoon replied, "yes, almost certainly.

However, we must not forget that the establishment and progress of the democratic electoral system must first promote Hongkong's growth and favorable pformation. "

Li Jiacheng's influence on the mainland market is similar to that of most Hongkong tycoons.

However, as the international image of his business Kingdom has shown, his relationship with the mainland of China has been markedly different from the original one.

One of his first major management decisions was made in the factory he worked for in the late 40s.