The meal, later this year at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in Manhattan, has taken on an additional dimension with Mr Buffett's announcement that he will donate to charity 85 per cent of his US$44 billion fortune, or US$37.4 billion.

This means that Mr Duan and his friends will meet not only the world's second richest man but also the second biggest philanthropist in history, after Bill Gates, the founder and chairman of Microsoft.

Mr Duan is modelling his life on Buffett, who transformed a failing textile manufacturer into a US$142 billion US holding company by acquiring out-of-favour securities and businesses in dozens of industries.

Born in March 1961 into a modest family in Nanchang , capital of Jiangxi province, Mr Duan studied wireless telephony at Zhejiang University before moving to the elite People's University in Beijing, where he earned a masters degree in economics in 1989. He went to Guangdong and took over an ailing plant in Zhongshan that made computer games and turned it into a profitable business, with assets totalling 1 billion yuan.

In 1995, he was one of the founders of Guangdong BBK Electronics in Dongguan and became its general manager and chairman. It has become a major manufacturer of wireless telephones, DVDs, electronic dictionaries, PDAs and other electronic products.

In 1998, Mr Duan paid 159 million yuan for the No1 advertising slot on prime-time television after the evening news and hired Arnold Schwarzenegger to publicise his products.

But in 2001, when BBK had an annual turnover of one billion yuan, Mr Duan made a life-changing decision. His wife and children had emigrated to the United States and he was commuting between China and the US. Unwilling to continue life as an 'astronaut', he decided to leave Dongguan and join his family, although he remains chairman of BBK.

Settling in Palo Alto, he needed a new career and started reading the books of Warren Buffett. 'Previously, I believed that financial markets were very mysterious but, after buying Buffett's works, I felt that running a business and running investments were similar. Do not invest in what you do not know. So I made investing my main activity.'

He started with Chinese internet stocks on the Nasdaq, including NetEase, Sohu and Sina.com. His most successful was NetEase, which he bought for US$1 a share in 2001 and reached US$70 in 2003. He remains a shareholder of the three.

He also did well with U-Haul, a US removal and trucking company, whose stock he bought at US$5 and is now trading around US$90.

By 2003 he was on an annual list of 100 richest Chinese, ranking 83rd with assets of more than US$120 million.

'In five years in the United States, I earned so much more money than in 10 years in China. This is due to Buffett,' he said. 'To understand his theory, the most important is to use your own blood and sweat and learn from long-term practice. I was also helped by my own experience in business.'

And, like Mr Buffett, Mr Duan has decided to give away most of his wealth. He and his wife have set up a charity in California called Enlight, dedicated to education and the environment, now worth US$50-US$100 million. The US tax system encourages the use of such charities, making money donated to them tax-deductible.

His two children - a son aged seven and a daughter aged four - will not see much of their parent's wealth. 'I do not want to give them too much. My childhood was poor. Our responsibility is to give them a good education and let them find a job they like. In the course of earning money, you learn many interesting things. But if the money is given to you, you are deprived of these interests and life is very dull.'

So he plans to ask Mr Buffett about both making money and giving it away.

'I am very interested in the details of Warren Buffett's investment in the past.

'I want to ask him - when you have too much money in your hand and do not find very good targets, what do you do?'

In the mainland market, he has only bought one stock, China Vanke, a Shenzhen property firm, because he considers the market immature and non-transparent. He is ready to donate to charities in China, probably through an established US charity.