A young girl who saw her Beijing family home ransacked by Red Guards and her father flung in jail during the Cultural Revolution might be expected to harbor bitter feelings about the 1960s.
But Ying Fang, who now heads a London investment bank, holds mixed views because she was also a Red Guard, fired up by the prospect of transforming society.
"China had a very old, stiff class culture into which I was born, where you had to be tight-lipped always," she says. "Chairman Mao [Zedong] smashed that completely, destroying the hierarchy and making everything feel possible."
Whether the Great Helmsman would have been full of praise, or horrified, by the career trajectory of the energetic woman who is now the founder and chief executive of Evolution Securities China can only be guessed at.
Fang herself is not particularly interested in exploring how one moves from 11-year-old firebrand to 52-year-old merchant banker, claiming she never delves into the past.
"I have chosen not to look back. It's better to look forward," she says baldly, but later comments that she looks to the future rather than "collecting the tears" of a bygone era.
Pauper
China has dramatically moved forward, from agrarian pauper to industrial powerhouse, over those decades. But how many former Red Guards end up in offices overlooking the Bank of England and send their children to posh English public schools?
Fang's innovative, if not revolutionary, duties now involve trying to help Chinese companies raise money in the west while carving out a good living for herself and her backers.
"There are many banks such as Goldman Sachs and others present in China, but very few of them are making money. It's easy to build a strategic presence but not to turn it into profit as we have done," she says.
She has already helped bring four firms to the London stock market, has three more lined up to float this year and has double that number ready on the launch pad for next year.
The role of Evolution Securities China, which is 35 percent owned by Fang and her colleagues and 65 percent by the Evolution brokerage, is to pick reliable and successful Chinese firms and match them with the right investors.
"There are huge cultural differences. Western due diligence doesn't work in China because the economics are very different. Many Chinese companies have traditionally judged their success only by whether they are making enough money to keep their staff employed." she says.
"Things have changed over the last 10 years but still things like who gets government support and who pays taxes are vital to know," she says.
Fang believes she is perfectly placed to do this, given her cross-cultural background and in-depth knowledge of the Chinese business community and solid experience of Western banking practices.
During the Cultural Revolution, Fang was sent from the middle-class comforts of Beijing to the Communist Labor University in far-flung Jiangxi Province, where she was confronted by rural poverty. That experience had the right impact, she believes, making her aware of how the other half lived. She returned with zeal to the capital where she worked for a government policy unit.
change
But her life began to change with the return to power of Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), whose pragmatic approach involved encouraging the Communist Party elite to travel abroad for international experience. Fang seized the chance to study economics at the State University of New York followed by a summer internship at the World Bank.
There she met the man who was to become her husband, Giles Chase, another financier, and transferred to the London School of Economics. This triggered a move to Britain. Charles Goodhart, her professor at the university, gave her a reference that helped win her a job as an economist at Barclays Bank.
She had several jobs with different institutions studying China but this was not a fashionable area in those days.
"It is hard to remember that China was of little interest to the Western business community. If you mentioned China, they thought you were talking about porcelain," she laughs.
Now that situation has changed, with almost every conversation on economics or commerce turning at some stage to China.
Fang believes there are business lessons to be learned from the way Mao built his cult leadership "brand," which is almost as omnipresent in China's present mixed economy as it was under doctrinaire communism.
"What is phenomenal is that he united a whole nation -- they all thought like he did. It was amazing the way he ensured that all messages went from the bottom to the top and vice- versa. A lot of management skills went into that," she argues.
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
REGIONAL STABILITY: Taipei thanked the Biden administration for authorizing its 16th sale of military goods and services to uphold Taiwan’s defense and safety The US Department of State has approved the sale of US$228 million of military goods and services to Taiwan, the US Department of Defense said on Monday. The state department “made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale” to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US for “return, repair and reshipment of spare parts and related equipment,” the defense department’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a news release. Taiwan had requested the purchase of items and services which include the “return, repair and reshipment of classified and unclassified spare parts for aircraft and related equipment; US Government
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from