Buddhist tycoon Chen Feng built Hainan Airlines into global empire
HNA Group founder says his goal is to become one of the world's top 100 companies by 2020
Twenty years ago, Chen Feng used to push the refreshment trolley up and down the aisle of the lone Boeing 737 that comprised his startup airline.
Today, based on the tropical island of Hainan, he controls a fleet of 483 planes - and has a jet of his own, a Gulfstream G550. Even so, Chen, a devout Buddhist, says he is far from the stereotypical Chinese tycoon.
"I live a simple life," he says.
As he sips a caffe latte in the lounge of the chalet-like Sheraton Davos Waldhuus Hotel in Davos, Switzerland, his words jar with the setting: At January's World Economic Forum, he is surrounded by other corporate titans.
"I don't drink, smoke, have banquets, go to karaoke or get massages," he says. "I'm different from the other entrepreneurs in China."
I live a simple life. I’m different from the other entrepreneurs in China
Where Chen, 60, is more like them is in his vaulting global ambition. In 1995, Chen flew to New York and persuaded George Soros to invest US$25 million in his fledgling Hainan Airlines. Since then, backed by the Soros imprimatur, he has ridden the boom that transformed balmy, coconut palm-fringed Hainan from a backwater into a billionaires' playground reminiscent of a Chinese Hawaii or Riviera.