Background
Li was born into a poor family in January 1951.
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Xiaohua Li
Edit Profile晓华 李
Li Xiaohua is currently one of the richest men in China. he is a chairman of the Huada International Investment Group,. But his success did not happen overnight. Rather, Li went through many failed attempts before tasting success. In his early days Li tried everything from farming and screening Kung Fu films to selling watches, iced drinks, and hair restorer. His luck changed, however, in 1989 when he established the Huada International Investme
Education
He was brought up in Beijing and graduated from middle school in 1967. Upon graduation he was sent, like many others, to the countryside to undergo ‘education through labor.’ Li spent eight years in Heilongjiang, a northern province bordering Russia and one of the coldest places in China.
Career
In 1978 he returned to Beijing where he began selling watches from Hong Kong. At that time, however, the only wages considered legal were those set by the government. The idea of a private economy was almost unheard of. Thus Li was arrested and sentenced to reform through labor for a period of two years. In 1979, China saw a change in Communist Party policy, allowing Li to go into business legally. Despite the odds stacked against him, Li decided to go the difficult route and become an individual entrepreneur. At the time he had only 6000 yuan (US$800) in savings. He invested about 3000 Yuan in a US made beverage dispenser. He used this iced-drink machine to sell beverages along the beaches of Beidaihe, a summer resort 300 kilometers northeast of Beijing.
Li’s immediate success made him anticipate intense competition the following year. Consequently, he sold his machine and decided to try another trade: film screening. He invested in video equipment and began showing Hong Kong and Taiwanese films in the nearby city of Qinghuangdao, located in the northern Hebei Province. With the profits from his iced drinks and film screening, he purchased his first Mercedes Benz in 1984. This marked the beginning of his automobile collection, and he became the first mainland Chinese to purchase a Ferrari in 1993.
In the late 1980s Li began taking classes at a business school in Tokyo, Japan. During this time he acquired the distribution rights for ‘101 Hair Regrowth Lotion,’ a Chinese-made hair restorer. He made a substantial profit off of each bottle by purchasing them for about 60 yuan (US$8) each and selling them for about 760 yuan (US$100). This brought in more than 100 million yuan (US$13 million) in profits. He then headed to Hong Kong. Following the Tiananmen incident of 1989, the Hong Kong property market was going down. Li invested the majority of his money in low-priced apartments and unsold residential properties. When the market rebounded six months later, he made a substantial amount of money, and as a result he established the Huada Group in the same year. The main interests of this group are in real estate, tourism, machine building, medical and health care products, and trade.
It currently employs over 8800 people and owns 33 firms in 16 countries. Besides his talent for business, Li is also known for his generous donations to sports causes, medical research, and education. He became the first Chinese mainlander to fund a public school with private funds. The International Asteroid Committee even named an asteroid after him, in 1996, as an appreciation for his assistance. One of his most noted contributions was in September 1990 when he donated 1 million yuan (US$133000) to the Asian Games. As a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference he hopes to actively lobby for the protection of private sectors. He also took advantage of the Asian crisis by looking to invest in companies in Southeast Asia and South Korea.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Career
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1979