At the end of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s landmark visit to China last month, he held a brief private meeting with a businessman who could have played a crucial role in improving ties between the two nations.
Huang Rulun (黃儒倫), a rags-to-riches Chinese billionaire funding two huge drug rehabilitation centers in the Philippines, has been held up by Duterte as a symbol of the relationship between the two nations.
Born to a poor family in Fujian Province, Huang was a small-time businessman in the Philippines in the 1980s. He spent five years in Manila’s Chinatown district, Binondo, before returning home to found a construction company, Century Golden Resources Group, according to the company’s Web site.
Photo: Reuters
Huang has a “strong emotional connection” with the Philippines, the company said.
According to its Web site, privately owned Century Golden now employs 20,000 people and posted close to a US$5 billion turnover last year. It owns 20 five-star hotels and 10 shopping malls, including the major Century City complex in Beijing.
Huang maintains a relatively low profile in Beijing, although he has extensive political contacts in Fujian, a source who knows the businessman well said.
He seems to have hit it off with the Philippine president. After a meeting with Huang, Duterte said that being able to meet him made his visit to China “more complete,” according to a statement from Century Golden.
Duterte also said the Philippines “needs friends like Huang,” the company said.
The meeting took place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Beijing the day after Duterte declared a “separation” from the US and a realignment of his nation’s foreign policy toward China. He has since backtracked and said he was merely pursuing a more independent foreign policy by strengthening ties with China.
For the Philippine leader, Huang’s support for the rehabilitation centers is in sharp contrast to the criticism of Duterte’s drugs war by the US and other Western nations.
China, Duterte said, had offered help “without boasting, without news, without publicity.”
“This is how you treat your friends,” Duterte said in a speech. “You do not go about reprimanding.”
At least 2,300 people, mostly small-time addicts and peddlers, have been killed in the Philippines since Duterte took office four months ago.
About 700,000 addicts have registered with Philippine authorities, but the nation has few facilities to treat them.
Huang has said he would fund two 10,000-bed rehabilitation centers for drug addicts.
“Drugs have always been a public hazard worldwide,” he said in comments e-mailed by a company official. “They hurt people’s bodies and disrupt social order.”
It is unclear how much he is spending on the centers, whether he would pay all recurring costs or just the cost of building them, or whether he would receive anything from Manila in return.
Huang declined to be interviewed, but has portrayed himself to Chinese media as a clean-living philanthropist and says he is funding the centers to improve ties between the two nations.
“As long as the Philippine government maintains a friendly relationship with China, I am very happy to invest in the Philippines,” Huang was quoted as saying by the Global Times last month.
“I don’t gamble, I don’t whore and I don’t do drugs,” he told the Securities Daily in 2013. “Me and my son together can’t spend away all my money through our lives. So why not use it to do something meaningful.”
Huang, a school dropout, was a small-time trader in Manila and made “a modest fortune,” according to the Philippine Star.
It was not clear what he traded.
According to Forbes magazine, he is now worth about US$3.6 billion.
Century Golden was one of 17 firms and individuals who made payments to Bai Enpei (白恩培), the former Chinese Communist Party boss of Yunnan Province, in return for favors, according to online court documents from a major corruption case in China earlier this year.
It was not immediately clear if Century Golden faces any further legal proceedings. Huang himself was not named.
Court officials declined to comment. Officials at Century Golden also declined to comment on the case.
Huang has been among China’s top six philanthropists named by the Hurun Report since it began publishing a list of top donors in 2012 and he donated an estimated US$125 million last year.
According to Hurun, the money was donated to education, infrastructure and social-welfare projects.
Prior to the Beijing meeting, Huang had met with Duterte three times in recent months to discuss what he could do in the Philippines, government officials said.
Philippine Secretary of the Department of Heakth Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial said Huang came up with the idea for funding the rehabilitation centers after meeting Duterte at the presidential palace in July.
“He seems very simple and unassuming. He is mild-mannered and seems very kind. He is sincere in helping the Philippines,” Ubial said.
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