The ‘trash to cash’ story of the world’s richest woman

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. — Greek statesman Demosthenes

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. — Chinese general Sun Tzu

We often hear about "rags-to-riches" self-made men, but Asia has now given the world a unique and inspiring "trash-to-riches" self-made woman, who just five years ago drove around the US with her husband in a used Dodge Caravan minivan, begging garbage dumps to give them scrap paper.

Thanks to Megastar Sharon Cuneta Pangilinan for her feedback during this writer’s recent six-week, 14-province, east/central/southwest China tour — she suggested that I write about the world’s top businesswomen.

There is a 49-year-old rags-to-riches entrepreneur in China with a net worth of US$1.5 billion named Zhang Yin, who has been described by the International Herald Tribune and other media as "richer than virtually any other woman anywhere in the world, including Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling and the chief executive of eBay, Meg Whitman."

After a first marriage and subsequent remarriage to a Taiwan-born overseas Chinese dentist who grew up in Brazil, Zhang Yin has led a remarkable entrepreneurial career. She is now acclaimed as the richest self-made woman in the world — richer than Giuliana Benetton (who co-founded the Italian garments giant Benetton with her brothers) and Rosalia Mera (who co-founded the Spanish fashion house Zara with her ex-husband). Other wealthy women inherited their fortunes from their fathers, such as the billionaire daughters of the late Wal-Mart retail empire founder Sam Walton, as well as the daughters of the founders of BMW, Mars candy bars, L’Oreal cosmetics and others.

Here are seven lessons I believe we can learn from Zhang Yin:

1. Seize opportunities. The daughter of a former army officer and the eldest of eight kids, she was born in the northern province of Heilongjiang near the Russian border. Her father was one of the many victims of the ultra-Leftist Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976 and was released from prison after 10 years. In the early 1980s when Deng Xiaoping unleashed China’s entrepreneurial energies by junking bankrupt Marxist-Leninist-Maoist illusions and embracing bold market-oriented reforms, she moved to the new "special economic zone" of Shenzhen and worked as accountant in a foreign joint-venture paper-trading firm. Later moving just across the border to Hong Kong, she used her experience and paper industry contacts to start her own business in 1985 with only $4,000 in savings and the idea of importing waste paper into China.

Today, she excels in importing waste paper from the US and Europe, recycling and manufacturing them into the corrugated paper used as packaging for the countless "Made in China" exports to the whole world. About 90 percent of containerboards for corrugated boxes produced by her factory use recycled waste paper, while 10 percent are from pulp.

2. Do honest, hard work. Unlike some vast fortunes built on controversial political connections or corrupt deals — similar to the Jardine Matheson fortune built largely on immoral opium exports to China — Zhang Yin’s wealth was built on old-fashioned honest hard work, savvy trading across continents and manufacturing efficiency. In a rare question-and-answer session with reporters in Hong Kong, where her company was publicly listed last year, Zhang Yin said: "I earned every single cent. As a listed company, Nine Dragons’ figures can be accessed by anyone who looks at its report card. All the figures are transparent."

3. Think globally. Like most overseas Chinese entrepreneurs who view the world as a borderless market, Zhang Yin didn’t let language, culture or other barriers stop her from going abroad in search of more business. She moved to Los Angeles in 1990 in search of supplies for her fast-growing business, and LA is where she and her husband established America Chung Nam as a paper recycling firm to export waste paper to China. In 1995, she set up Nine Dragons Paper Co. in Guangdong province as a corrugated paper and packaging factory with a bank loan.

Today, LA-based America Chung Nam is the biggest US exporter to China, while Guangdong-based Nine Dragons Paper Co. has a market value of US$5 billion. Last year, when she publicly listed her firm in Hong Kong, raising US$480 million, among the billionaires who invested in her IPO included Malaysian Chinese taipan Robert Kuok Hock-Nien of Shangri-La, Cheng Yu Tung of the New World Group and Lee Shau Kee of Henderson Land.

4. Focus. Zhang Yin said that in the first decade of Nine Dragons’ corporate existence, the business was strictly focused only on paper and paper materials, unlike many top Asian family businesses, which have over-diversified beyond their core businesses.

5. Tap professional talents. Unlike many self-made entrepreneurs who are geniuses at creating enterprises but unwilling to tap professional managers to help run operations, Zhang Yin takes charge of overall strategic decisions in Nine Dragons but has hired three general managers (who are non-relatives) who take charge of key operations.

6. Have family as the core of business. Despite her open-mindedness about tapping the best professional talents to be her managers, Zhang Yin shares the East Asian preference for maintaining overall control and strategic leadership of the enterprise within the family. She correctly pointed out that many of the world’s leading paper corporations in the West are family-controlled and she hopes that Nine Dragons will remain within her family for the next hundred years.

7. Dream big. Zhang Yin has guts, boldness and a grand vision. She is not afraid to dream big. Last January 16, The New York Times reported: "Zhang Yin has become one of the world’s richest women from her Nine Dragons Paper recycling business, which collects waste paper from the United States and ships it to China; Zhang hopes to challenge global paper giants International Paper, Weyerhauser and Smurfit Stone."

Nine Dragons Co. is now constructing a huge factory complex in the booming Yangtze River Delta area near Shanghai. Last year, her company registered a record increase of 349 percent in net profits, to $175 million. She plans to invest $800 million into more than doubling production capacity by 2009, which shall catapult Nine Dragons into Asia’s number-one largest packaging paper manufacturer by this year, eclipsing the Oji Paper firm of Japan. With Zhang Yin’s bold plans and the vigorous growth of China’s export-driven economy, she hopes to lead her enterprise to become the world’s largest packaging paper corporation by 2009.

If a woman of modest means like Zhang Yin can build a world-class business recycling humble trash into cash by dint of honest hard work and bold entrepreneurship, it is eloquent proof that even in this complex and globalizing 21st century, anyone on earth can attain their highest goals as long as they are willing to work hard, think up new ideas and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve his or her dreams!

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