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Mark O'Neill

Poor stonemason's son shows a steady hand as he replaces the 'tail on capitalism' and becomes a billionaire in 10 years

Guo Guangchang is the son of a rural stonemason who studied  Confucius and Hegel and became a billionaire in 10 years.

In 1992, he left a post in the Communist Youth League at Shanghai's Fudan University and, with four college friends, used 100,000 yuan (HK$93,730), mostly borrowed, to set up a company.

By the end of last year,  Shanghai Fosun Industrial Group was worth 11.47  billion yuan in assets, making it the 197th biggest company in China and the seventh largest private firm.

Mr Guo is the president and biggest shareholder, owning more than 30 per cent, valuing him  at more than three billion yuan. From the 11th storey office of his company building, he has a stunning view of the Huangpu River and the skyscrapers of Pudong.

How does he explain such a rapid fortune?

'It happened in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, during their years of economic take-off,' he said modestly. Li Ka-shing and the Kwok brothers [of Sun Hung Kai Properties] made a fortune in several years. It is less likely to happen there now. But, in China, we still have 20 years more of fast growth.'

Will the millions of Chinese who have not shared in this rapid growth allow people like Mr Guo to enjoy their wealth or will jealous cadres find reasons to take it from him?

'Contradictions in society are inevitable in a country that is developing as rapidly as China. There is no question that we need development and efficiency first and this is the priority,' he said.

'Next comes the issue of fair distribution. The government is paying close attention to this and working to deal with the problem of social welfare.

'If I have acquired my wealth legally and it is good for society, it will be protected.'

Does he employ a bodyguard, to protect himself against possible kidnapping or attack by a  rival?

He laughed at the idea, saying that he felt very safe.

His hi-tech office building is a  universe away from the village of Dongyang, in Zhejiang province southeast of Shanghai, where he was born on the 16th day of the second month in the lunar calendar in 1967. He is one of three children of a stonemason - who often had to leave home to find work - and a mother who grew sweet potatoes.

It was the middle of the Cultural Revolution, when everyone was ordered to 'cut off the tail of capitalism'. This meant his father had to share some of his meagre earnings with the collective and that they could not  farm their small piece of land by themselves.

The most fervent hope of his parents was that their children would, through study, be able to escape the poverty and toil of the village and move to the city.

His two elder sisters were unlucky. When they finished secondary school, there was no university entrance exam. But Mr Guo,  who passed the exam for the secondary school in the  county town, was more fortunate.

By the time he graduated,  the universities had reopened and in 1985 he passed the exam for Fudan University, where he chose to study philosophy, from Confucius and Mencius to Hegel and Marx.

'In 1985, during the time of Hu Yaobang, China's reforms had reached a crossroads. In the face of key problems, which are also philosophical problems, it was necessary to find a better way forward.'

During his time at university, China's students had two major movements - in  winter  1985-86 and the spring of 1989. Many students who played too prominent a role lost their college places and, in some cases, their lives.

Did Mr Guo join his classmates on the streets in 1989? 'I experienced it,' he said cryptically.

'When I graduated in 1989, it was hard to find a job. The economy was very depressed. So I worked for three years at the university in the Communist Youth League.'

He thought of going to the United States, as many of his classmates had done, to study sociology.

But, after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992, he decided  to go into business and he joined with four friends from Fudan to set up Shanghai Fosun  in November 1992, using 100,000 yuan in mostly borrowed capital.  Mr Guo invested more than 30 per cent.

While he  had graduated in philosophy, three of the five were majors in genetic engineering and one in computer science.

Their first business was market research, from which they earned just enough to support themselves, while they searched for something better.

They started to work as property agents selling apartments costing 3,000 yuan per square metre to the middle class from which they earned a 3 per cent commission.

They earned 10 million yuan.  'None of us had done business before. We had to learn everything from scratch.'

With this capital, they went into pharmaceuticals and listed this part of the company in 1998.

'Until the listing, financing was a problem. It was hard to get money from banks. After the listing, it became easier.'

The next sector, in 1998, was steel. The group invested in a private steel plant in Tangshan and a new facility in Ningpo with output  of six million tonnes.

Earlier this year the group spent 1.65 billion yuan for a 60 per cent share of  state-owned Nanjing Steel Works.

To steel and pharmaceuticals, they added finance, property,  vehicles, information technology  and commerce. The group has invested in  Industrial Bank,  Shanghai Bank and two securities firms.

It has  22 per cent  of Jinlong Auto, which produces 22 per cent of China's commercial vehicles and has invested in Shanghai Friendship Group, the parent company of the Lian Hua supermarket chain which listed in Hong Kong in June.

It is also a property developer, with 2.26 million square metres in 25 projects under construction this year. The property arm, Forte Group, was due  to list in Hong Kong early this year but withdrew at the last minute.

'An investor must manage his investments. We pick the best people we can to run these companies.'

In the future, Mr Guo plans to stick to these core sectors.

'We could buy assets abroad, like mines with coal and iron ore that we need in China, as well as technology and companies with overseas sales networks. We will keep China as our base and make best use of its advantages.'

Mr Guo works seven days a week, with golf his main recreation. He said that his wife, who works at Shanghai Television, does not mind his exhausting work schedule. They have a two-year-old daughter and live in a 1.2-million-yuan house near the airport.

He uses a chauffeur-driven Mercedes 600 and flies frequently around China, looking at  projects.

Last year he became a member of the National People's Congress but, despite  the Communist Party opening  the door to private entrepreneurs, has not joined. 'I do not meet the demands of the party,' he said with a smile, adding that two of the five founding members of Fosun were in the party.

Biography

Shanghai Fosun Industrial Group founder and president Guo Guangchang was born in 1967, to  a stonemason in a village in Dongyang, Zhejiang province. He attended primary and secondary school in Dongyang before entering Fudan University to study philosophy. After graduating in 1989, he joined the Communist Youth League and stayed for three years. His first venture was to set up Shanghai Fosun with four classmates from Fudan. The listing of a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai in 1998 allowed the company more access to funding. Last year,  the company recorded group sales of 10.11 billion yuan (HK$9.47 billion).



Successful philosophy leans towards profit