The inside story of the Liaoning: how Xu Zengping sealed deal for China's first aircraft carrier
In the mid-1990s, the former PLA basketball star was contacted by officers within the PLA Navy with a secretive mission: go to Ukraine and buy the Soviet-built carrier
Xu Zengping knew the moment that he saw the hulk of a half-built Soviet aircraft carrier anchored in a cash-strapped Black Sea shipyard that he had to buy it for China.
Standing on the deck of the vessel in the snow and chill of a wintry day in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on January 28, 1998, Xu, a PLA basketball player-turned-businessman, said he was awed by the strength of the steel leviathan. "It was the first time I had ever been on a carrier and I was overwhelmed [by its size] … I told myself that I should buy it at all costs and make sure it became part of our navy," he said.
The Kuznetsov-class carrier was intended to be the pearl of the Soviet naval fleet when construction began in 1985, but in the aftermath of the USSR's collapse, the Ukrainian government needed to sell it to help dig it out of dire financial straits.
Xu, best known in Hong Kong for his Palace-of-Versailles-style home on The Peak, was on a mission to buy it for the Chinese military. But he had no idea of the costs and the political waters that lay ahead as the vessel made its way from the Black Sea to China, where it would be transformed into the Liaoning, the country's first aircraft carrier.
Speaking exclusively to the South China Morning Post at the South Lake Hotel in Guangzhou, a neglected former guesthouse for the central leadership, he revealed for the first time the price he paid - and says he continues to pay - over two decades for his central role in the mission of a lifetime. "One Hong Kong business friend lent me HK$230 million in 1997 without any guarantee - just based on our friendship and my integrity," Xu said.