Chapter 40 39. "Land King" International Trade

The China World Trade Center, which was fully opened on August 30, 1990, became the most famous convention and exhibition center and high-end office building in China after its completion.It was also the most famous foreign investment project in Beijing that year.China World Trade Center is located in the core area of ​​the central business district of Beijing's East Third Ring Road, covering an area of ​​12 hectares with a total construction area of ​​560,000 square meters. It integrates office, accommodation, conference, exhibition, shopping and entertainment. The first choice for stationing in Beijing.It is the most famous exhibition venue and conference venue in Beijing. Its office building is one of the most expensive top-level office buildings in Beijing. The hotel China World Hotel built in it is also a benchmark in the hotel industry in Beijing. It has been awarded by the American Quality Service Technology Association. The "Five-Star Diamond Award" issued by the hotel has been rated as one of the best hotels in the world by many world-renowned business media for many years. In 2009, the third phase of China World Trade Center will be completed and unveiled, which will make China World Trade Center the largest international trade center complex in the world.

If there is no further delay, the 330-meter-high China World Trade Center Phase III will be unveiled in 2009, making it the tallest building in Beijing.The third phase of China World Trade Center with a construction area of ​​540,000 square meters, plus the first and second phases of China World Trade Center that have already been put into use, will have a total construction area of ​​1.1 million square meters and become the largest international trade center in the world. The completed Phase III of China World Trade Center can resist earthquakes of magnitude 8. Every 15 floors, there is a closed refuge floor that can block the entry of smoke, so that in the event of a fire, the people entering the refuge floor can breathe air.Although the building is 330 meters high, the elevator installed on this building runs at a speed of 10 meters per second, and it only takes half a minute to take the elevator from the top floor to the top.On the roof of the third phase, a helicopter landing pad was also built; inside this new building there will be a tens of thousands of square meters of the largest banquet hall in Beijing.The total investment of China World Trade Center Phase III is US$800 million jointly invested by International Trade Center and Shangri-La Group.The International Trade Center and the Shangri-La Group have a common shareholder: the famous Malaysian Chinese tycoon Kuok Hok-nian.

Robert Kuok, whose ancestral home is in Fujian, China, is one of the world's most mysterious billionaires."Forbes" magazine, which listed Guo Henian as the richest man in Malaysia for several years in a row, also spoke ominously when mentioning him.In the early years, it was even difficult to find a photo of Guo Henian.According to a widely circulated story, in 1986, the former president of the MCA, Tan Koon Chuan, was tried in a Singapore court for his involvement in the Sing Pan Telecom incident.Guo Henian went to listen.When Guo Henian walked slowly past the crowd, none of the reporters present from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong recognized that this person was the famous Malaysian tycoon Kuok Henian.A reporter who went to interview accidentally talked with Guo Henian and asked him what kind of occupation he was engaged in. Guo Henian replied, "a rice seller."It was only when he released Chen Qunchuan on bail in court that people discovered that the middle-aged man who had been silent in the crowd was Guo Henian.Regarding Guo Henian's birth year, some people say it was 1924, while others say it was 1923.

Kuok's father founded Dongsheng Company, which deals in rice, flour, beans and sugar. In 1948, Guo Henian's father, Guo Qinjian, passed away. Kuok Henian, who had established his own shipping company in Singapore, returned to Malaysia to take charge of the family business.With the support of his mother, Guo Henian, who ranked third, was elected as the chairman of the company by his two older brothers. In 1949, the company was reorganized as Kwok Brothers Limited. In 1957, Malaya became independent from Britain.Kuok realized that with the decline of the traditional British economic power, there would inevitably be a vacuum in the domestic consumer goods market in Malaya.The Malayan government urgently needs to develop import substitution industries in order to embark on the road of independent economic development.Therefore, Guo Henian established a joint venture with the Malay Federal Land Development Bureau in 1959 to establish the first domestic sugar refinery, the Malayan Sugar Factory, in Penang.He purchased raw sugar from Thailand, processed it in his own sugar factory, shipped it to various places, and sold it to China through a commodity brokerage company in Hong Kong.He also purchased cane sugar from Cuba and resold it to Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries.

In 1961, before sugar prices rose, Kuok purchased large quantities of sugar from India.This judgment allowed him to enjoy the high profits brought about by the price increase.Guo Henian continued to invest in the sugar industry. In the end, his company produced 1.5 million tons of sugar, controlling 80% of the Malaysian sugar market, which is equivalent to 10% of the world's sugar production.This earned him the nickname Asia Sugar King. Guo Henian with strong capital has also set foot in flour, mining, real estate, shipping and other fields, the most famous of which is the Shangri-La Hotel that he began to build in 1971.The first Shangri-La Hotel appeared in Singapore. In 1977, Guo Henian built the famous Hong Kong Kowloon Waterfront Shangri-La Hotel.Shangri-La hotels all over the world, especially in Asia, have made the Shangri-La Hotel Group controlled by Guo Henian one of the largest hotel groups in the Asia-Pacific region.

Next, Guo Henian also entered the media field. In 1988, Guo Henian acquired a 30% stake in Hong Kong Unlimited at a price of HK$2 billion and became a major shareholder. Five years later, in October 1993, the Kerry Group controlled by Kuok Henian acquired the South China Morning Post from Murdoch. In 1984, Guo Henian began to invest in the mainland.His first investment in the mainland was the Shangri-La Hotel on Nanshan Road by the West Lake in Hangzhou.But his most famous investment is the China World Trade Center, which was built in 1985. In November 1985, Guo Henian, as a member of a private entrepreneur trade delegation, followed Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir to visit China.It was also in this year that Hong Kong Kerry Industrial Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the Kuok Brothers Group in Malaysia controlled by Guo Henian, and Xinguang Property Management Center, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, jointly invested in the construction of the International Trade Center.In order to build the International Trade Center, Guo Henian invested 380 million US dollars.This was also the most commendable investment case among the cases of China's introduction of foreign capital at that time.

Guo Henian said that his investment in mainland China is firstly to prove that there are good people among capitalists; secondly, to help the modernization of the Chinese mainland;But apparently, his investment made him a huge profit later on.It also accumulated good political resources for him in mainland China. The most critical step in Guo Henian's accumulation of resources was after 1989. He did not withdraw from "Guomao" like the foreign-funded institutions in Beijing at that time, but increased his investment by tens of millions of dollars. On August 30, 1990, China World Trade Center was fully opened and immediately became the most famous exhibition center and high-end office building in China. At the beginning of 1999, Guomao issued 160 million A-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, raising RMB 850 million. The China World Hotel, which opened in Guomao in 1990, is still the benchmark of Beijing's hotel industry until today. In 1995, the Kerry Group controlled by Guo Henian built the Kerry Center, a high-end office building near China World Trade Center, which also includes a Kerry Hotel.In addition, Guo Henian also built the Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing's West Third Ring Road in 1987, which was the highest and most luxurious five-star hotel in Beijing at that time.

Since its completion and opening in 1990, China World Trade Center has become the most famous new building in Beijing.What makes Guo Henian's investment more far-sighted is that Guomao later became the core area of ​​the business district in Beijing's urban planning. For a long time, even to this day, Guomao has almost become synonymous with Beijing's central business district (CBD). In 1992, two years after the official opening of China World Trade Center, Deng Xiaoping made a southern tour to promote China's economic reforms, and the 14th National Congress held at the end of the year made the whole country believe that the market economy is the only way for China's future.This proves Guo Henian's foresight in investing in the mainland, no matter what the purpose of this Chinese business tycoon is to invest in the mainland.

In 1993, the State Council approved the "Beijing City Master Plan".In this urban plan, the planners clearly proposed that Beijing should build a central business district.The core area of ​​this central business district is located in the East Third Ring Road where China World Trade Center is located, and also includes the Kerry Center that Guo Henian invested in and built later. Like many Southeast Asian business tycoons, the company controlled by Guo Henian is a typical family business and relies heavily on the weaving of the network. The "Far Eastern Economic Review" once commented: "One of the keys to Kuok's success lies in his ability to maintain his impeccable connections with a wide range of Asian businessmen and bankers. His partners are all celebrities among the most powerful in Asia. For example, the Chen Bichen family, the owner of Bangkok Bank in Thailand."

The most obvious and important form of this relationship is the holding of shares in each other's companies.Cross-shareholding makes these Southeast Asian tycoons a close community of interests.The Chen Bichen family owns a lot of shares in the Shangri-La Hotel Group, and Bangkok Bank is one of the main banks for Guo Henian's financing.The Hong Kong Shangri-La Hotel has shares in Ho Yaokun (deceased), the chairman of the Jicheng Group, and Hong Kong film and television tycoon Run Run Shaw. In the late 1980s, Guo Henian and Run Run Shaw jointly acquired Hong Kong TVB. Run Run Shaw was the chairman of the board of directors and Guo was the vice chairman.Later, Run Run Shaw decided to go all out to develop Hong Kong TVB, and his main business in Malaysia was acquired by Kwok Brothers Co., Ltd.

Another Southeast Asian tycoon, Lin Shaoliang and Guo Henian, have been close since the 1960s.Lin Shaoliang's Samling Group has almost monopolized the rice and sugar Chrysostom business in Indonesia.Kuok has a stake in a sugar factory and company owned by Lam Siu Leung, who is also a shareholder in the Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong. Like many Southeast Asian tycoons, Kuok's ties to politics have been debated.After the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, the close contact and exchange of interests between business tycoons and the government was called "crony capitalism", and the change of government power brought about by the financial crisis also brought about the rise and fall of tycoons.But Guo Henian has always stood firm.It has something to do with the government relations he has been struggling to manage.When he was studying at Raffles College in Singapore, Kuok Henian's classmates included former Malaysian Prime Minister Razak Hussein Ong and Singaporean Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew.Guo Henian has a good relationship with Southeast Asian political tycoons such as the next Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir and Indonesian President Suharto.Guo Henian's elder brother Guo Heju has served as Malaysia's ambassador to the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, and the former Yugoslavia, the chief representative to the European Community and the chairman of the Malaysian Tourism Board. Moreover, Guo Henian also took the initiative to participate in state-owned enterprises, and even served as the chairman himself.His own company will also absorb state-owned enterprises as shareholders. For example, in the Shangri-La Hotel Group, there are shares in state agencies such as the Federal Land Development Authority of Malaysia.As for investments in China, such as China World Trade Center and Shangri-La, Guo Henian also absorbed government-controlled companies as shareholders.In this way, Kuok weaves together his company's interests and those of the government.Some people even joked that the Guo family's industry is the country's industry, which is the Eastern version of "General Motors' interests are the interests of the United States." Guo Henian's investments spread all over Asia, and he is particularly optimistic about Hong Kong and mainland China. Moreover, his optimism is often made when others are uncertain about the future of these two regions.Whether it was the resurgence of foreign capital after the political turmoil in 1989, or the flight of capital before and after the return of Hong Kong, Kuok Henian did not shake his confidence. Regarding Hong Kong, Kuok Henian said: "I believe that China will not smash this Oriental Pearl and cause China to suffer losses. "He and his eldest son Guo Kongcheng became permanent residents of Hong Kong. In Forbes magazine, Guo Henian's place of residence is written in Hong Kong.Guo Henian's Arowana also became a sponsor of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.The third phase of China World Trade Center, which is under construction, was also selected in the selection of Beijing's new landmarks held by a Beijing media.