Background
Yung was born in Shanghai to businessman Rong Yiren, who later became the vice president of China during the 1990s.
智健 荣
Yung was born in Shanghai to businessman Rong Yiren, who later became the vice president of China during the 1990s.
He graduated from Shanghai Nanyang Model High School in 1959 and went on to Tianjin University, where he majored in electronic engineering.
After Rong graduated from Tianjin University in 1965, he had an internship in a hydraulic power plant in Jilin Province. In the following year, when the Cultural Revolution started, Rong’s life changed again. As his father was targeted by red guards and his family houses were destroyed, Rong was forced to work in the remote Liangshan minority region of Sichuan Province until the end of the Cultural Revolution.
In 1978, Rong Zhijian went to Hong Kong and met his grand-uncle Rong Zhongjin. With assistance from his family, he became active in the Hong Kong business world. Using family funds, Rong and his cousins Rong Zhijin and Rong Zhiqian jointly established the Elcap Electronics Plant in the New Territory. The company originally produced capacitors and toys, but later switched to integrated circuits and computer memory chips. In 1982, Rong Zhijian invested in the United States with funds earned from the plant. During the same year, he cooperated with a number of former IBM engineers to establish the California-based Automation Design Co., the first to specialize in computer-aided design software in the United States.
Four years later, Rong Zhijian joined his father at CITIC and became a vice president and general manager of CITIC (Hong Kong), a part of CITIC Pacific. Rong’s first business success in Hong Kong came in 1989, when he sold his shares of AI stock to an American company. However it was the establishment of CITIC that marked the new beginning of his business career. With the help of his father, he became good friends with top businessmen such as Ka Shing (Jiacheng) Li and Helian Guo. Benefiting from China’s economic boom, CITIC Pacific’s earnings soared dramatically during the early 1990s. It owns 26 percent of Cathay Pacific Airways and is a partner of Wal-Mart in the Shanghai area.
In December 1996, Rong and the CITIC Pacific Group purchased 330 million shares of CITIC Beijing stock from Jun Wang (CITIC Beijing) at 33 yuan per share, a 25 percent discount; 290 million of those shares went directly to Rong’s personal account. In the following year, when his father was named vice president of China, his shares of stock increased to 380 million, making him the second largest stock owner in China next to CITIC Beijing. In August 1997, CITIC Pacific Group’s stock jumped to 53 yuan, and Rong’s assets increased to more than RMB200 billion. However during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Rong’s business also experienced fluctuations. When the CITIC Pacific price fell to 13.2 yuan, his stock mortgage account at the Commercial Bank was frozen, and rumors began to spread about the instability of his business. At this critical point, CITIC Beijing pumped RMB1.9 billion cash into the CITIC Pacific Group to bring the stock price back to a more normal level. Since then, Rong has never again denied that CITIC Pacific Group is a ‘red stock,’ and acknowledged for the first time that his company is a joint venture between private and state-owned enterprises.
Currently, Rong continues to live a billionaire’s life in China, owning a luxurious house, a yacht, a private jet, and a forest, and each summer he invites his family and friends to vacation at a castle in southern England.
Yung's uncle, Paul, elder brother of Yiren, died with 34 others in Hong Kong's worst air disaster on Basalt Island on 21 December 1948.