Get Rich Quick

By Anthony Spaeth/Beijing

Richard Yan is not merely a new breed of mainland Chinese businessman--he's a member of the very first class, and one of its rising stars. His Richina Group, which didn't exist four years ago, has revenues of $270 million and 1,850 employees making leather, running a jazzy Beijing aquarium and turning out computer magazines. Yan, 34, is the driving force, and his megawattage borders on the nuclear. He works 100-hour weeks, flies only coach on business trips and flops on friends' couches to cut expenses.

But the key to this instant Chinese empire is more than energy and frugality. Yan and his business thrive on investors in New York City; New Zealand; Fort Worth, Texas; and Nashville, Tenn.; a globally scattered network of chums from Harvard Business School; ceaseless international E-mail; cell-phone calls from a lawyer named Larry; and Yan's addiction to the jet-set schmooze fest in Davos, Switzerland, each January. "I go to Davos and can talk to Newt Gingrich," enthuses Yan, who indeed seems voluble enough to talk to anyone, quite emphatically, and at any length. "I call him Newt. And I realize we're all the same: the trousers go on one leg at a time. Most people in China don't realize that."

That's the sound of a frontier being breached. The globalization of business and finance has clobbered several Asian economies in the past year, but you hear few people proposing to build up the barriers again. On the contrary: the world of business is now for the worldly like Yan, even those operating in China. "China has done so much damage to itself for 200 years," Yan mourns, "by not realizing the world is larger than it." That's a lesson he learned early--Yan first left China at the age of 17 with a borrowed $26 in his pocket--and he preaches his globalization creed to anyone who cares to listen. "You can't stop globalization," he lectures. "Information and knowledge are the biggest equalizers in the world. Bottom line, I really believe the world will become one."

Few people have heard of the Richina Group yet--or, for that matter, any other company in mainland China, though it's one of the world's largest and most vibrant economies. Yan hopes to change that with a very 21st century business plan. He wants to build a pan-China corporation--Richina stands for "Rich China"--but not by hiding behind tariffs and protectionism. China is his market and the font of business opportunities; the rest of the world will deliver finance, technology, professional expertise, the copy printed in his computer magazines, and even tax shelter. (Richina is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.) "I would never say this to friends," he says with uncommon modesty, "but I want to do my bit to make China an internationally recognized country. At the same time, the fact that I live in Shanghai means nothing. I live in the global village."

Yan's journey to that address has been an amazing one. Born in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin and raised in a single room in Beijing by his father during the Cultural Revolution, Yan attended a school that was less than educational: in the afternoons, the children manufactured envelopes. In 1980, as China was starting to open to the outside world, Yan's grandfather reactivated old international links from before the 1949 communist revolution. (Granddad had founded Tianjin's branch of the Rotary Club in the 1920s.) Yan got a Rotary scholarship and was the first high school student in China allowed to go abroad. Wearing his school uniform, he took a train to the Hong Kong border. A family friend met him, bought him clothes, a watch and a Playboy-brand belt. Seven days later, he arrived in Auckland, New Zealand. "My hosts met me at the airport," he recalls. "I really didn't have enough English. I meant to say, 'How are you?' Instead I said, 'How old are you?' And I have a very loud voice." From there it was off to Harvard and then four years working for Bankers Trust in New York City and Hong Kong.

But the life of an expatriate multinational employee was frustrating for Yan: China's economic prospects were growing so scintillating. He got in touch with a friend who was managing money for the Ziff publishing family and another who knew Texas-based investor Richard Rainwater. With these contacts, Yan attracted $52.5 million for a venture-capital fund targeting new businesses in China.

The investment fund is involved in a scattering of businesses, but Yan admits that in the future he wants to own and manage his own empire, with his biggest ambitions centered on media and such nonideological magazines as PC World and the Chinese version of Popular Mechanics. And though he has proved a wizard at attracting capital, Yan has yet to prove himself as a manager. He has had a hard time attracting and retaining foreign managers, something that will be essential if Richina is to continue growing.

The ultimate burden of globalization, though, lies with entrepreneurs like Yan who, succeed or fail, are stretching old ideas of economic possibility. "Today all my capital is from abroad. But five years from now, I guarantee you, I'll be able to float a company here in China." He adds, with characteristically world-class ambition, "I'll only have to say, I am Richard Yan."