Giant's Secret Codes for Survival is, ironically, a book about an ordinary Chinese man with a big dream. With just 4,000 yuan in his pocket in 1989, he started his business and elevated himself to become the eighth richest man on the mainland in Fortune magazine's rich list in 1995.
Just as his rise from oblivion to business celebrity status was stunningly fast, his fall from the pedestal was even faster.
An unfinished 72-storey building in Zhuhai bankrupted him in 1996. He owed investors more than 200 million yuan even after a court ordered him to shut his company and took away all his properties.
Anyone who is familiar with Chinese entrepreneurship may remotely have heard of Shi Yuzhu, chief executive of Giant Interactive, an online game operator listed on the New York Stock Exchange this month. Its stock offering raised almost US$900 million from international investors, with more than half of it from the majority shareholders, Mr Shi and his daughter.
The listing episode was not included in the biography that Mr Shi endorsed. Published in August, it was an instant hit with mainland readers hungry for get-rich stories.
Without the US listing, Mr Shi already had success in the bag, according to authors of the book. 'With over a million people playing his online game simultaneously, everyone knows those customers will bring him big fortune, listed or not,' one of the authors, Liu Shiying, said in a published interview last month.
