Background
Wang Yung-ching was born in January 1917 in an impoverished family.
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Yongqing Wang
Edit Profile永庆 王
also known as
Yung-ching Wang
Wang Yung-ching was the founder of the Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Group, one of the world’s top 50 chemical producers and a Fortune 500 company. As the wealthiest man in Taiwan, Wang Yung-ching was known as the Taiwanese ‘godfather of business’ and was also a pioneer in investing in mainland China.
Education
After finishing school at the age of 15, Wang Yung-ching worked in a rice store for about a year and then started his own venture with 200 Taiwanese dollars borrowed from his father.
Career
As his business grew, he built a factory for rice hulling and polishing, and also invested in the lumber industry. In 1954, when he was 38, Wang made an audacious attempt on a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) powder project, widely regarded as unpromising, and founded the Formosa Plastics Industry Ltd. The adventure paid off and the company became a record-breaking success in the young and fast-growing Taiwanese petrochemical industry. From then on, Wang Yung-ching, together with his brother Wang Yung-tsai, began to develop the company through vertical integration as well as diversification, and eventually built a gigantic family business. At 47, Wang established the Formosa Chemicals & Fiber Corporation, which grew into one of the largest fiber producers in the world. At 50, he restructured his diversified businesses and set up the Formosa Plastics Group, the biggest private enterprise in Taiwan.
When he was 60, the group began to develop rapidly. By 1984, according to incomplete statistics, it reached a total capital of $4.5 billion and an annual turnover of $3 billion, accounting for 5.5 percent of Taiwan’s GDP. Its turnover in 2007 was estimated to be more than $16.6 billion. As the only private Taiwanese enterprise among the Fortune 500 companies, Formosa Plastics Group is a conglomerate of petrochemical processing, fiber chemicals, electronics, power industry, transportation, automobiles, biotechnology, education, medical and healthcare. The group has nine subsidiaries employing over 70 000 employees. There are more than 1500 downstream providers working in the supply chain led by Formosa Plastics.
In December 1989, when foreign investors were moving out of mainland China in the wake of political disturbances, Wang Yung-ching paid a secret visit to the country and was granted a meeting with Deng Xiaoping and other leaders in Beijing, initiating his interests in mainland China. Wang signed a deal to invest in a $7 billion petrochemical complex in Haicang, Fujian Province. However the scale of the project, which would have included an oil refinery and two naphtha-cracker plants, and the sheer audacity of the move stunned the Taiwan administration. So Wang was forced to give up the plan, which nonetheless motivated many other Taiwanese businessmen to invest in mainland China, relieving the country of a financial crisis.
Later, Wang split the investment into smaller projects and built over 30 companies in China, the total investment surpassing US$500 million. Wang’s biggest investment, however, was the US$3 billion Hwa Yang power plant located in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. Besides a petrochemical complex and power plants, Formosa Plastics’ investment portfolio in China also includes biotech ventures, automobiles, steel, logistics, and hospitals. Wang is devoted to elementary edu- cation as well, and plans to set up 10 000 primary schools in mainland China. From 2004–07, over 2000 such schools have been established, costing more than RMB900 million. Meanwhile, Wang has set up a ‘Chang Gung Scholarship,’ named after his father, covering all 31 cities and provinces throughout the country, and every year 1000 students in each region should benefit.
Personality
In June 2006, after chairing the group for over half a century, Wang relinquished his position. It is said that the Wang brothers hope to follow the model of the Rockefeller family and trust their property shares to professional management, so that the family empire would never dissolve. Currently, the reins have passed to the second generation of Wang’s family as well as professional managers, but Wang’s spiritual influence is sure to stay for the coming decades. On 15 October, 2008, Wang passed away in his sleep at the age of 91.
