Background
Charles Zhang was born on October 31, 1964 in Xi'an, China.
朝阳 张
Charles Zhang was born on October 31, 1964 in Xi'an, China.
Zhang graduated in 1986 from Tsinghua University in Beijing. After receiving the prestigious CUSPEA scholarship to pursue a graduate degree in the United States, he earned a PhD in experimental physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.
First working as MIT liaison for developing strategic partnerships with China, Zhang returned home in November 1995 to establish Internet Securities Inc. A year later, he founded Internet Technologies China, which was later renamed Sohu.com, and in February 1998 the first Chinese language search engine was launched.
A listing on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in 2000 provided Zhang with funds to upgrade Sohu’s networking and computer infrastructure and to boost marketing and sales efforts. The pioneering rollout of wireless services soon after blazed a trail for other portals in China. When online advertising was not enough to support further growth, Zhang developed and added new money-making services, such as wireless multimedia messaging that enabled users to send pictures and videos, new e-business and software applications and homepage storage with email. In 2003, Sohu.com became the first Chinese internet company to achieve full-year profitability.
Annual revenue reached US$80 million, up 180 percent on the previous year, with the bulk of the income coming from non-advertising business. The acquisition of the game information website 17173. com and Focus.cn, a real estate information website, attracted more internet users and new advertisers. After a decade of operation, Sohu.com has become a household name in China. Through continuous product development and exclusive content partnerships, Sohu.com has established itself as the premier portal destination for internet users in China and the ideal platform for advertisers to reach the attractive consumer market segment of young, affluent urban Chinese.
Zhang regularly participates in leading international conferences, including the Fortune Global 500 Forum, Fortune magazine roundtables, and World Economic Forum meetings. For his leadership and professional achievement, Zhang has been recognized as a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum, and was named among the world’s top 50 digital elite by Time magazine in 1998. The same publication also named him as one of 15 Global Tech Gurus in 2003, while BusinessWeek included Zhang in its list of 25 global e-Biz CEOs.
During the same year he also became a member of the All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce, and in 2004 Zhang was the first Chinese national to receive the Academy of Management’s 2004 ‘Distinguished Executive of the Year’ award. A person with a spirit of adventure, in 2003 Zhang sponsored and joined a Chinese team for an expedition to Mount Everest to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first human to conquer the world’s tallest mountain.
In many occasions, Zhang mentions about hoping he can live till the age of 150. He believes that stress plays an important role in aging and if one practices yoga and understands Buddhism, he/she can be "freed" from stress, and so live till the age of 150. Zhang also enjoys mountaineering, he has been training on Mount Everest and has reached the height of 6,666m above sealevel, he hopes to scale the top of Everest one day. In 2012,he had depression. After full recovery, he come back to sohu and as the post of Sohu video CEO 2014.
