Oei Hong Leong (front right second) along with his family members. Photos Provided to China Daily

Honesty's lessons, as taught by an entrepreneur's father, translate into success. Cang Lide reports.

Integrity is integral, Oei Hong Leong says. Its reverence has surely served him well. It has not only made him wealthy but also enabled him to produce incredible contributions to the country's prosperity. "Doing business or managing an enterprise, one must set honesty as the foundation. It's not merely a matter of the system. It's more a matter of moral integrity," he explains. His ideas about morality come from his father, he says. "Honesty is one of the fine traditions carried forward by Chinese. My father ran up a large debt when doing business in Indonesia in 1945 soon after the Japanese surrender. So, he sold everything in our home - even my mother's wedding ring - to pay the debt," he explains.

"Keep your words and promises, even if you are reduced to poverty and ruin - this is my father's lesson. Dad told us that being honest means good faith and credibility. And if you're empowered by honesty, you can succeed in interpersonal relations and in your career."

That is why Oei always provides personal guarantees to banks in business dealings. He believes the credibility established between a company and a bank has a certain limit, even if the company is listed on the stock market. But the credibility of a person is more reliable to a bank, he believes.

"Because this is what I've done, I must shoulder the responsibility," he says. "But interestingly enough, the more courageous I am in shouldering the responsibility, the more fortune falls on me."

Oei has braved the battlefield of business for decades and won business partners' trust and respect.

His upbringing bears the imprints of his time, and his early years of experience have blossomed into business acumen.

Oei was born in 1948 into a prominent business family of overseas Chinese in Indonesia. His father, Oei Ek Tjhong, was a prominent business leader.

More than 50 years ago, when his rich father decided to send him from Indonesia to China to "let Chairman Mao educate him", he could never imagine his son's life would become a modern parable - a journey from prince to pauper to king.

Although his father hoped the son would seek traditional Chinese culture's ancestral roots, the 12-year-old boy found himself instead eagerly reading Mao.

He'd seen the years of poverty colored with revolutionary idealism. And he toiled in rural farms and slept in an adobe bed with seven other "educated youths".

"We dressed in old and torn clothes those days and lived in poverty, but everybody showed great zeal in pursuit of a meaningful life. We were more interested in how to serve the people and make contributions to society, rather than to serve personal material interests or get rich on our own," he says.

Oei is one of the few entrepreneurs who practices Mao's thought.

When the penniless Oei returned to Indonesia from China, he started business in two industries. Before long, he became the leader in the import of Japanese steel and monopolized palm oil exports.

"I was inspired by Chairman Mao's words: 'Power grows out of the barrel of a gun'," he recalls.

"The first friend I made was the commander-in-chief of the military forces. Our cooperation started when I helped raise welfare for low-income soldiers, giving their children educational opportunities and providing houses for their families. And they helped me solve business problems, in turn. I soon paved the way for my business."

With the wealth he accumulated in Indonesia and Singapore, he returned to China in the early 1990s and plunged into the capital market.

He set up a foothold in Hong Kong, where he started his company, China Strategic Holdings, as a springboard to do business on the mainland.

The first place he chose to invest in was Shanxi province - the very place he had worked as an "educated youth" during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). He formed a joint venture with a large State-owned enterprise in Taiyuan, Shanxi's capital city.

Inspired by Mao's spirit of "seize the hour and seize the day", Oei lost no time in translating this successful business model into other places and business fields in China, where his operations grew to extend far and deep.

Within four years, his business kingdom expanded from Shanxi to encompass Zhejiang, Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces, and Beijing. It contains dozens of joint ventures with billions of yuan in investments.

As a result of his efforts, more than 200 State-owned enterprises have been revamped and revitalized.

His early years of experience in China have become his intangible asset. That is because many of the business partners and government officials he dealt with then shared the same happiness, sorrows, values and language.

Although he does not have a university degree, he has spent so much time and energy in reading what he calls: "China, the heavenly unwritten book".

That is why the "Oei Hong Leong phenomenon" has influenced Chinese enterprises and has become so prominent that some Chinese entrepreneurs believe Oei's contributions to Chinese enterprises' knowledge of capital operations could surpass the impact of 100 textbooks. In fact, the case study of China Strategic Holdings' acquisition and transformation of Chinese enterprises has been included in textbooks used in MBA programs in China, Europe and the United States.

When China's stock market was bubbling with Olympic exuberance in 2007, a year ahead of the Beijing Games, he anticipated a market price fall of more than 50 percent.

Some stockholders scolded him for his pessimism.

Others followed his advice and withdrew from the market before the collapse.

He cites Mao to explain how he knew the market would flip.

"Things turn into their opposites when they reach the extreme."

Contact the writer at canglide@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 09/22/2013 page17)