From farm worker to Liaoning’s richest man in four decades ... behind the circuitous rise of Huishan Dairy’s chairman Yang Kai

Huishan Dairy’s chairman Yang Kai’s road to success proved circuitous, as he spent more than four decades turning himself into the richest person in Liaoning province.

But the more than 20 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) fortune he amassed evaporated in just less than two hours on March 24, when Huishan Dairy’s H-shares plunged 85 per cent.

Born in 1957, Yang was sent to Kangping county, Shenyang to experience the grinding poverty of the rural poor working on the land, according to the Beijing News.

Four years later, he started at a state-owned flour factory in Shenyang before he was transferred to another state-owned company making food-processing machines in 1984.

By 1992, though, he was a major shareholder with a Chinese business partner, and general manager of the Sino-US joint venture, Shenyang L&D Cereals & Foods.