Hanyuan Liu

Background

Liu Hanyuan was born in 1964, the year of the dragon, Liu Hanyuan grew up in Meishan, Sichuan, China.

Education

He attended the local Sichuan University, one of the earliest institutes of higher education, established back in 1896 and one of China’s key universities under the State Ministry of Education. Growing up in a peasant family, Liu became interested in his future profession by farming fish in the local Meishan canal, but it was the sale of his family pigs in 1983, to raise $60 to fund his fish-farm, that gave Liu his first experience of business. A combination of the two sparked the entrepreneurial spirit of the man who would become one of the wealthiest private business owners in China.

Career

On 20 September 1992, Liu founded the Tongwei Group, which currently controls the following companies: Chengdu Care Pet Food Co. Ltd, Chengdu Xinrui Technology Development Co. Ltd, Sichuan Tonly Construction Engineering Co. Ltd, and Leshan Yongxiang Resin Co. Ltd. Nearly 80 branches and subsidiaries of the group manufacture feed, including those in Tianjin, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guangdong, Xiamen, Wuhan, and Wuxi. Tongwei Co. Ltd has become the largest aquatic feed producer and the primary distributor for poultry and livestock feed products in the world, with a total annual capacity of over 5 million tons. In 2005, aquatic feed manufactured by Tongwei dominated 15 percent of the national market share, ranking a clear first in the country for ten consecutive years.

The Tongwei Group has become exceedingly successful. In 1993, the director of the National Feed Office, after hearing Liu’s report on Tongwei’s development, hoped that Liu could help rejuvenate China’s feed industry. A year later, an evaluation and appraisal was taken on Tongwei’s products. They were certified by the vice president of the Animal Nurition Research Institute in the Ministry of Agriculture as being scientifically formulated and possessed of high value. After many years of producing high quality products and sticking to their four-word creed, ‘Honesty, Trust, Fairness, Excellence,’ the Tongwei Group has become one of the largest private enterprises in China. It has helped boost a market that had an average annual growth rate of 15 percent in 1990 to an output of 66 million tons in 1998.

Achievements

• Liu has received numerous awards in recognition of his hard and dedicated work. In September 2004, he was elected as one of China’s most influential business leaders. In addition, he was nominated for Top Ten Excellent Private Entrepreneurs. In 2005, Liu won the honorary title of one of the year’s Most Creative Chinese Business Leaders in the Asia-Pacific Region. His company was chosen as one of the Top 100 Listed Companies in China’s Private Sector, Top 50 Most Competitive Private Companies in China, and Top 50 Most Competitive Brands in China’s Private Sector.

Politics

Between 2000–04, Liu was ranked in the top 30 of Forbes list of the richest Chinese business people and in the past two years he has been ranked in the top 215 of the richest people in China. At age 42 and number 123 on the 400 richest Chinese list, Liu is worth $253 million and the company is worth $3.3 billion. While being the CEO of the Tongwei Group, a multi-billion dollar company, Liu served his civic duty and was elected to the tenth Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which is a political advisory board in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is commissioner on the Central Committee of the China Democratic National Construction Association. He is also a member of various committees, such as the National Agriculture, Science, and Technology Association. He is the vice president of the China Fishery Association, the vice president of the Academy of Forestry, Livestock, and Fishery Sciences China, and the vice president of the China Feed Industry Association.