Why initially sceptical Hong Kong property tycoon Gordon Wu put his faith and money in Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s vision of reform
- Hong Kong entrepreneurs were among the first to head for mainland China after paramount leader announced country was on path of reform and opening up
- They started factories for everything from toys to textiles, built hotels and motorways, and played a crucial role in the tremendous changes to unfold over the next 40 years
When President Xi Jinping met a delegation of top officials and business leaders from Hong Kong and Macau in Beijing on November 12, he singled out property tycoon Gordon Wu Ying-sheung and praised him for building mainland China’s first superhighway.
But Wu, chairman of Hopewell Holdings, was initially a sceptic who wondered if China’s ambitions of economic reform and opening could ever take off, given the way things had been run for so long, with the state deciding everything.
His 1972 visit to Guangzhou for the Canton Fair, the mainland’s largest trade show, left a deep impression and it was not good.
He found everyone in Guangzhou dressed the same, in faded olive-green trousers and green cotton shirts, or grey trousers and grey shirts.
At a Chinese opera performance, he asked the 20-something woman seated next to him if she was married. “She said it wasn’t easy to get married because approval from the authorities was needed,” he recalled.
Travelling around Guangdong province, he saw slogans everywhere, saying: “Down with the class enemy!”