Writers from China's diaspora
Her name appears on the cover of the guru anthology 50 Success Classics, alongside Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela and Sun Tzu. In the Asia Pacific, she outsells Anthony Robbins and Hillary Clinton.
Chin-ning Chu's books are broadly concerned with achievement by almost any means. Her 1991 debut, Asian Mind Game (Scribner), divulges how to negotiate with Asian executives by playing their own do-or-die game. Thick Face, Black Heart (AMC Publishing) reveals 'how to apply deception without sin to win the deal you want'. Do Less, Achieve More (Regan Books) gives the reader the low-down on 'the hidden power of giving in'.
Translated into 17 languages, Chu has readers in more than 60 countries. Her fans apparently includes Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, former US secretary of state James Baker, and former British leader John Major.
Speaking from her holiday home in Antioch, California, the strategist, who has lived in the US since leaving Shanghai to seek prosperity at 22, sounds mean in the American sense - and mystical. She dismisses her ex-husband as 'very, very boring' and refuses to divulge the identity of her current spouse, saying: 'Keep his name out.' On the other hand, evoking her age, with a lilt in her voice she says, 'as young as less than a second, as old as eternity'.
Her book-in-progress, Wisdom of the Kings, explores the meaning of a circa 5BC work her banker father used to read to her in childhood: Sun Tzu's Art of War. About 200 versions of the translation exist, but the authors don't measure up, she says. Either their only qualification is that they come from a Chinese background - 'If you are Greek, that does not make you a Greek philosopher' - or they are academics who lack 'pragmatic business battle experience'.
Nobody could say that about Chu. She's the president of the Strategic Learning Institute, president of Asian Marketing Consultants and chairwoman of NeuroScience Industries - but is no 'degree collector'.