BUSINESS

Winner: Dream Builder Wang Chuanfu  

With his personal fortune blooming to US$5.8 billion this year, Wang Chuanfu was crowned China’s wealthiest individual in 2009's Hurun Rich List. But that’s not why he’s TALK’s business person of the year.

Wang is the founder of BYD, or Build Your Dreams, a Hong Kong-listed rechargeable battery and auto manufacturing company that many hope will emerge as a world leader in making hybrid electric cars. American billionaire Warren Buffet has plugged into BYD’s green car dream as well – investing US$250 million in the company for a 10 per cent stake.

In December 2008, BYD began selling a plug-in electric hybrid car in China, driving past similar American and Japanese efforts. Priced at an affordable RMB 150,000 with the help of cheap abundant labour, BYD expects to sell the F3DM for a similar price in the US as early as 2010.

BYD has also been criticized for copying other companies’ designs, though the auto maker claims it’s just synthesizing good ideas in the industry. Still, the fact that Wang has built his start-up – which began with a US$300,000 loan from relatives to start BYD in Shenzhen when he was 29 – to please both big business and environmentalists, a feat already in itself.

Runner Up: China’s Henry Ford Li Shufu

Li Shufu comes from humble beginnings. He is the son of Zhejiang farmers, and with only RMB 2,000, he started his very first business in refrigerators.

Today, he is called the Henry Ford of China, the chairman and founder of China’s largest privately-owned car firm, and one of the country’s richest businessmen.

Although Geely only builds about 200,000 cars a year at present, Li has seen the stocks of his Hong Kong-listed company soar four-fold this year alone after Goldman Sachs invested US$245 million in September, a major seal of approval. And if that’s not enough for Li, Geely (which means ‘auspicious benefit’ in Chinese) is also currently in discussions to buy Volvo Cars from Ford.

His business savvy has pushed Geely towards becoming a global competitor. The company aims to increase output to 2 million cars a year by 2015, with 1.4 million cars expected to be exported or manufactured overseas by then. For Li, car-making isn't a complicated business: “Making cars is not as mysterious as people think. A car is merely four wheels, a steering wheel and an engine. The level of technology used in manufacturing cars is very high. It seemed to me that I just needed to buy the technology and the parts, and pay for engineers."