young, free and single-minded
WHEN Tan Ji Wei turns up for lunch, he doesn't apologise for being late. He ambles into the packed and pricey Guangzhou restaurant with his bodyguard-cum-driver, slumps into a chair and shouts for a bottle of red wine. Tan doesn't apologise but he does explain himself. He was out last night, he says as the wine arrives. He tips it in fine mainland style into a jug, mixes it with lemonade, pours out the fizzy claret/sprite combo and, with a clink of glasses, leads those around the table in a hearty 'Gam bai!'. Only when he has ordered another bottle of wine does he finish his explanation. 'Kao Loi,' he says to whoops of delight from his friends around the table. Roughly translated, it means 'chasing skirts'.
Tan is a self-confessed playboy and he is rich. If everything he says is true, he is very, very rich. He owns property in Guangzhou and Hong Kong and has recently bought a 70,000-square-metre site that nestles among paddy fields outside Guangzhou.
He describes this latest acquisition as a 'five-star country club'. When finished, it will boast three houses - one for the servants, one for guests and a twenty-five room mansion - two swimming pools, a boating lake, a tennis court, a full-size soccer pitch, an ornamental garden and a helipad. The helipad, like much on the site, is still under construction. His 15 million yuan (HK$14.01 million) country home is being built with 'a good friend' as a partner and for now, the two plan to keep it for themselves. But they predict property prices will rise, so this is both a large-scale luxury toy and an investment.
Tan also owns a couple of furniture factories, a paint factory and a bank. Not a whole bank, mind you. He only has a 25 per cent share. But it's not bad for a man who's twenty-five-years old.
TAN is typical of a new breed in China: young, male, rich and rampant. They're a tubby testament to China's freewheeling 'miracle' economy. After years of widespread poverty and a strict state-controlled economy, China - or, more correctly, urban booming coastal China - has begun to make money. Lots and lots of money.
'I'm not one of the really rich guys,' Tan tells me in mock protest. 'I'm just a small guy.' It's difficult to believe him but his protests are understandable. Although Tan is happy talking money - what, where, when - he's less happy talking about how. That's not to say he's done anything illegal. Far from it. It's just that like many riding high in China's miracle economy, Tan is reluctant to say too much about his rise to riches. Booming Guangdong province has something of the Wild, Wild West about it and too much publicity attracts unwanted attention. What also makes him hesitate is the fact China's free market economy is, as yet, not completely free and the conditions that have allowed Tan to make so much money could change at any time. It's a boom, boom, stop economy that may be freewheeling right now but that still exists at the whim of Beijing.