How did he become a billionaire in a Maoist communist country?
I am a Chinese miracle. He was predestined to marginalization. When I was five years old, my father was sentenced to thirteen years in prison as an anti-communist… And he committed suicide there.
How did you survive?
We were four brothers and my mother was forced to work as a security guard on some industrial lands where she died of poisoning.
I’m sorry!
I took refuge in books… And at 16 I read Don Quixote: how I learned from his madness!
Many Spaniards will never read it.
We were puppies of anti-revolutionaries; Nobody spoke to us and I took refuge in poetry.
A verse of yours that serves us all today?
Your life is climbing the mountain/You strive, you fight/You make friends and enemies/You cry and laugh and one day… You arrive/And what do you see down there?/
¿…?
Everything is cloudy and blurry/That’s life: don’t expect success or failure/Look for another mountain…/And keep climbing.
And I keep climbing: what was your mountain?
When I was 18 I wanted to go to university.
To be a university student, shouldn’t you first have been a communist?
That’s why I worked for the party and the government in Beijing and went to university there.
I interviewed one of the Tiananmen leaders who fled to NYU in ’91; Was it a massacre?
The party was divided, but Deng Xiao Ping, the father of Chinese prosperity, won, who knew how to understand the future, open up the markets and finally make China fly.
And you flew?
Many of us realized then that being a civil servant was no longer the best job and so I went from being an ideologue to a businessman and in ’92 I stopped working for the government.
Did Deng Xiao Ping help you?
Thanks to him I was one of the first Chinese in history to become entrepreneurs: we set out to conquer markets and China began to open its doors and prosper.
How old were you?
I was 34 and had no idea about business. The truth is that no one knew what they were in China then. To begin with, I sold toys and dolls; Then I dedicated myself to printing everything until I rented an old factory and restored it to rent it at a much higher price…
And then he rented another factory and another…?
I earned a lot until the 90s when I discovered Hongcun, a small town that had remained intact for 500 years, and signed a 30-year contract with the government to restore and exhibit it.
Couldn’t you buy the land?
In China you can’t buy anything; but I was able to lease it to the State for a few years. And I restored the little town, which today is a UNESCO world heritage site.
Congratulations.
This year we have already had 3 million visitors and it is a big business for restaurants, hotels, souvenirs and shows, where the movie Tiger and Dragon was filmed. And I discovered other typical towns, until we became the largest tourism company in China.
Did you study at the CEIB with Pedro Nueno?
In Shanghai, yes, and I was a donor, about two million dollars, to that brilliant business school associated with IESE in Barcelona. I am also a sponsor and president of the World Poetry Association…
Let’s see if they are also encouraged by journalism, which we greatly need.
As a mountaineer I have crowned the seven highest mountains on the planet and Everest 3 times and now I visit world heritage sites – such as Barcelona – for my new project…
Do you want to buy something here?
I only donate and invest in protecting heritage that I study in 160 countries. 6 years ago I started selling many company buildings…
Hasn’t a financial bubble burst in China after the pandemic?
…And that is why we do not have debts today, but rather a lot of liquidity and projects. I have had a great team for 30 years and I want them to help me in the big new city we are planning next to the Beijing airport. In China, the future is bright.
Doesn’t the stagnant Chinese demographic – 1,375 million Chinese – slow down its development?
The problem is often the concentration of power in a too small core and the most dramatic is corruption.
Are you a member of the party?
Today I am just a businessman. We have invested a lot in the US and now I am looking for other opportunities for poetry – also mine, which I will now translate into Spanish and it is already in French – and business: they are ways to grow together… All over the world.
Where are you trading now?
I am now negotiating for the Norwegian Government to return Chinese works from its museums to us and one day while climbing a peak in Tibet I discovered a Buddhist temple, my faith, and I financed its reconstruction… And I continue looking for poetry, business, heritage and friends.
