A former Chinese Cultural Revolution role model who shot to fame in 1970s China for submitting a nearly blank exam paper is poised to enjoy the fruits of capitalism as his company lists on the Shanghai stock market.
Zhang Tiesheng’s (張鐵生) stake in Liaoning Wellhope Agri-Tech Joint Stock (遼寧禾豐牧業) will be worth more than 189 million yuan (US$30 million) after the firm lists on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, company filings show.
Zhang is known for handing in an incomplete test paper to a university admissions committee in 1973, saying he was too busy working the land to devote time to academic learning, according to accounts.
He did write a note to the exams graders, in which he said he had “no respect for the bookworms who for many years have been taking it easy and have done nothing useful.”
An “educated youth” sent to work on a rural commune in the northeast province of Liaoning during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, he said that his abilities should be judged on his contributions to the country.
Zhang, who is in his early 60s, later cofounded Wellhope, an agricultural feed company, and now has a 6.8 percent stake in it.
His identity and role in the company were noted by the Beijing Morning Post, which said: “Blank examination paper hero Zhang Tiesheng worth nearly 200 million [yuan] because of share listing.”
Separately, Snapchat Inc has held talks with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) on a possible investment in the mobile messaging startup, US media reported on Wednesday.
It was not clear whether the discussions will lead to a deal, the reports said.
Alibaba, which is preparing for its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange in September, reportedly valued Snapchat at about US$10 billion, media said.
Snapchat rocketed to popularity, especially among teenagers, after the initial version of the app was released in September of 2011. Created by then-Stanford University students, the app allows the sending of texts and photographs that disappear seconds after being viewed.
The company last year rejected a buyout offer from social networking giant Facebook Inc, judging the US$3 billion offer too low.
It has also been courted by other investors and would-be buyers, including a group led by Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), which estimated its value at US$4 billion.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day