The yin and yang of Li Ka-shing: Resented in Hong Kong, renowned on the mainland
chinaonline.com
While Hong Kongers see the business tycoon as the too-rich recipient of 40 percent of their spending money, mainland Chinese think he's precious, with a capital 'PR.' Story
By R.J. Michaels in Beijing
ChinaOnline News
(12 January 2001) Hong Kongers, eyes rolling, say that for every dollar they spend, 40 cents goes to Hong Kong’s wealthiest citizen, business magnate Li Ka-shing. He and his family are also said to control a quarter of the Hong Kong stock market.
But in mainland China, where Li has been increasingly active since the early 1990s, most money spent still goes to some arm of the central government. And people's eyes light up when they speak of him.
"Most ordinary people think he's a kind of hero," said Wang Yizhou, department director of the China Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economies and Politics. "He is a hero because he is very rich, very clever and very quick to do business."
His tack: quietly stay on the central government's good side. Li's Hong Kong-based Cheung Kong Group, often working together with his Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., has built 15 malls, housing complexes and first-class hotels in mainland China.
Conquering the coasts
His businesses are concentrated in eastern and southern cities, from Zhuhai—just north of Macau—to Shenyang in the industrial northeast. His better-known properties include Oriental Plaza in Beijing and the Tsingtao Beer headquarters in the city of Qingdao, which is also the home of the Pacific Plaza, a 78,686-square-meter (847,000-square-foot) combination of golf course and housing complex.
The Watsons drug stores and Park 'n Shop supermarkets he controls also do steady business in upscale Beijing shopping centers. Beijingers have just discovered Oriental Plaza, which was built last year in one of the capital's most crowded shopping districts.
Its 906,000-square-meter (9.75-million-square-foot) compound links a five-star hotel, eight low-rise office towers, two apartment buildings and about 150 shops of Reebok and Starbucks stature. Beijing shoppers generally don't go on buying sprees there, but they marvel at the mall's slick clean floors, its direct subway access and how far they can walk without stepping outside.
Chinese people's image of Li Ka-shing is that whatever he touches turns into gold.
--Wang Wei, president of Jingtai
Securities & Investment Ltd.
In Chongqing, a city in western China, Li's group developed a 58,528-square-meter (630,000-square-foot) low-income housing project and a companion complex of residential towers plus shops on 79,617 square meters (857,000 square feet).
Is low-income housing out of character for a man worth some US$53 billion? Not really. Projects such as this may make Li welcome in the mainland, said Peter Churchouse, a managing director with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. in Hong Kong.
Citizen Li
Li's philanthropic aid and assistance in building infrastructure such as Yangtze River ports and public housing endear him to government officials, Churchouse said.
Li also sat on the Hong Kong handover committee in 1997, and news reports last year hinted that he might have worked directly with Beijing to have the kidnapper of his son Victor executed in the mainland rather than tried in Hong Kong, which does not have the death penalty.
"He's low-profile. He doesn't go around waving a big stick. It seems he can knock on the door in Beijing whenever he wants, but he doesn't do that very often," Churchouse said of the 71-year-old. "At the end of the day, he's making a shilling out of it."
He may have learned a lesson in Hong Kong. There he controls the only fixed-line phone company, a mobile phone company, a major power company and the territory’s only cement company. In Hong Kong "there’s a sense he has too much control," Churchouse said, and Li’s companies have hinted at backing off.
During Hong Kong’s Legislative Council campaigns last year, Li threatened to withdraw his Hong Kong investments when local media made candidate Gary Cheng acknowledge links to big business owners, including Li.
Li’s size may already have overshadowed his low profile in the mainland. In October the Far Eastern Economic Review reported that China’s Ministry of Communications asked local port authorities to limit the rule of Hutchison Port Holdings, part of the Hutchison Whampoa group that reportedly handled a quarter of China’s container shipping in 1999.
However, officials from Hutchison and the central government denied the claims, according to Far Eastern Economic Review.
Mainland makeover
But Wang Wei, president of Jingtai Securities & Investment Ltd. in Beijing, said Li’s careful PR normally keeps the government happy. For example, Wang Wei said, Li is backing Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympic Games.
"He's good with the government," said Wang, who keeps up with Li through his investment work in Chinese stock markets. "He helps Beijing, and they can help him."
Mainland media, Chinese people's major source of information about the big businessman, almost always make Li look good, said Wang Yizhou from the China Academy of Sciences. "The majority report on him as a mysterious administrator, and there's little about his shortcomings," he said.
The Cheung Kong Group did not respond to ChinaOnline’s repeated requests for interviews except to say that Li recently gave an interview to Beijing TV.
Mainlanders think they know what's behind the veil. "Chinese people's image of Li Ka-shing is that whatever he touches turns into gold," said Wang Wei. |
