Background
Mi Enhua was born in 1958 in the city of Tai’an in Shandong Province to a family of ethnic Hui Muslims. When he was four, Mi’s family moved to Xinjiang, located on China’s northwestern frontier.
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Enhua Mi
Edit Profile恩华 米
Education
At the age of 14 at the peak of the Cultural Revolution Mi dropped out of school and took a series of jobs, including work in a quarry and as a construction laborer and waiter.
Career
In 1980 he landed a job in the Urumqi Municipal Urban Management Office as an inspector, where he worked for eight years.
In 1988 Mi borrowed 30 000 yuan from friends to build a construction materials market named Red October Market in the provincial capital Urumqi and founded his new company, Xinjiang Hualing Group. Xinjiang shared a border with what were then Soviet Central Asian republics and political and trade barriers were only just beginning to thaw. At first business was slow, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 Mi was well placed to take advantage of the emerging market in Central Asia. Mi was twice forced to relocate his market at great personal cost, but by the mid-1990s trade between Xinjiang and Kazakhstan and Russia was booming.
Achievements
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Mi Enhua’s personal wealth grew to the point that in 2003 Asia Money ranked Mi as the 38th wealthiest individual in China, with estimated assets of $170 million. Hualing has expanded into meat processing, recently opening a $155 million processing plant to meet the surge in demand for mutton and beef.
The company has also opened a five-star hotel and the region’s largest shopping mall, the International Trade and Commerce Plaza in Urumqi. The complex also serves as a conference center and hosted the 2005 Western China International Economic Summit, which included an address by former American president Bill Clinton. In 2001 Mi initiated a program that sponsored 150 orphans in Urumqi, and since that time he has supported more than 500 orphaned children.
Career
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1980
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1988