Robert kuok a memoir pdf download

He explains the cultural and social principles underlying Chinese business organizations and their dynamics, illustrating his analyses with examples drawn from Asian and North American businesses. Communication patterns, networking, negotiation, competition, and the structure of China's transition economy are all discussed.

Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc. It is easy to use, the information is clear and well-presented, and the volume is smart and robustly crafted. The book is an important reference source for practitioners in international business, entrepreneurs and Asian studies. This is a useful reference for scholars and students in China studies and for business practitioners. Wei, Choice As direct foreign investment, both inward and outward, continues to gather momentum, the need to understand the leaders of Chinese corporations is increasingly important.

The Biographical Dictionary of New Chinese Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders is therefore a welcome addition to corporate and academic libraries. The encyclopedia provides up-to-date coverage of the major players in China s new economy. Dorothy Mays, Chinese Librarianship A long awaited reference volume! Professionally compiled and user-friendly. A must for the serious researcher. Leo-Paul Dana, Journal of Enterprising Communities Biographical information about business leaders and entrepreneurs in China is scattered in a variety of Chinese sources such as books, newspapers, journal articles, web pages, etc.

This biographical dictionary, written in English, which includes some of the most important movers and shakers of the new Chinese economy since , is a very useful reference tool for libraries of all types as well as for anyone who is interested in learning and understanding the growing influence of China as a new economic power in the world.

Hwa-Wei Lee, formerly of the Library of Congress, and Ohio University Libraries This impressive effort by two leading scholars of Chinese business and society will quickly become a reference for all students and practitioners. Indeed, it is a ready vade mecum, filling the crying gap many experts have identified in recent years. This work will set the standard for its successors: independent in its analytical assessments, broad-spectrum in its choice of entry, far-sighted in its selections.

John R. Compatible with any devices. Dutch: An Essential Grammar shows, step by step, how the language is constructed. It presents a lively and accessible description of the language using plenty of relevant examples.

Particular attention is paid to areas of difficulty for English speakers. With a range of suporting exercises and lavish use of illustration, this is the ideal first grammar for the Dutch learner. This volume establishes Amitai Etzioni's communitarian approach to international relations as a distinct school of American foreign policy thought.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev systematically evaluates Etzioni's ideas, tracing their origins during the Cold War and their relevance to current challenges in Asia and the Middle East, and considering their strengths and weaknesses. Etzioni agrees with liberal internationalists who believe that traditional notions of state sovereignty are eroding and that a new set of global norms is required.

However, he argues against the imposition of Western policies on the rest of the world, which he sees as a recipe for conflict which the United States cannot afford. He warns against the post-Cold War triumphalism, arguing that it undercuts efforts to find necessary common ground with both Russia and China. An enduring and stable global architecture cannot be maintained unless it appeals to the interests of a broad community of nations. The trust that is needed for forming closer associations between nations and to have a productive dialogue on human rights can only come about through the voluntary coordination of states forced to combat an increasing array of transnational threats.

Includes facts about Malaysian and Singaporean history, as well as insights into the processes of decolonization and nation building. The celebrated lectures were given by Professor Pentti O. At the end of each chapter there are challenging exercises, which help the reader further in deepening his or her understanding of the current topic, and which will also be a boon to other lectures who use this as their course book.

Author : Harukiyo Hasegawa,Michael A. Author : William Z. Author : Nikolas K. Author : British Museum. From , I began travelling to the mainland itself. My first trip took me to the Canton Trade Fair, with a side trip with several busloads of overseas Chinese to a commune outside the provincial capital. We had a good lunch of simple village-style food at a village community hall.

In my early visits, I sensed that the people in China were highly moral and decent. I never felt like a stranger. There was a lot of red tape laced with a high degree of suspicion. Many cadres did not have experience of business, and they feared that every capitalist was coming to try to rob the nation of its national treasures.

You will meet brick walls. Why bang your head on a brick wall? However, I saw that China was pitifully backward. I felt that the country must wake up and join the modern world. It was much poorer than the Malaya into which I was born.

I felt that I wanted to help China and, if possible, push the country to develop faster. Thank God there were good people, and standing above them all was Deng Xiaoping. I have Mother to thank for my lifelong interest in the birthplace of my parents. Mother always retained a strong and deep emotional tie to her homeland. Yet, she was very objective and critical of all the Chinese faults, including the foibles of successive governments and leaders.

She was travelling regularly between Malaya and China in the late s and early s. Thank god there were good people [in China], and standing above them all was Deng Xiaoping Mother always stood up for the poor. In , on one of her trips back to China, she collected all the title deeds for her properties in Shandong province and went north with an assistant.

They identified each tenant farmer and made a gift of the land to those who had tilled and maintained it. But, from early on, she knew that mistakes were being made. She saw the harm that the Great Leap Forward did to the rural areas. During the war years you needed heroic acts. The tales of daring during the Long March and the call to fight the Japanese resonated with the people. But once all the battles are won, you have to focus on building up the economy and bringing up the standard of living of the people.

Mother was a strong critic of the bad and bullying behaviour of local bureaucrats towards their fellow Chinese. In the early s, she made a trip to Fuzhou after many years away. She was required to deposit her passport with the Public Security Bureau of Fuzhou.

After staying for a few months and feeling unhappy at what she saw around her, she decided it was time to go back to Malaysia. One day, she got really angry. The Chinese Government told us to go overseas and become worthy citizens of the countries of our adoption. Why do you keep my passport? What have I done wrong? Why are you treating me like this? I shall go to Beijing to lodge a strong complaint.

Yet she was very objective and critical of all the Chinese faults Within a few days of that incident, an official brought the passport to her home, and she booked a flight and returned to Malaysia. Many poor Chinese from Fujian had left to seek a better life abroad, particularly in Southeast Asia, and when they went back to China to visit relatives and asked for assistance, they would often find the bureaucrats at the Overseas Chinese Bureau officious and unsympathetic.

What can we do for you? I do not need any help from you, but you could offer your help to the many returning overseas Chinese who are poor and illiterate and who really need your help. Only that can propel him to achieve more things, to be more creative and productive. China will and must continue to be driven by this. But that stage is a long way off. Before that, man must complete the long march to becoming truly civilised, and we have only travelled the first few of ten thousand miles.

Hong Kong: attractive tax system. At that time, it almost appeared as though the Singapore and Malaysian governments were competing with each other to see which could levy the highest taxes on those who were generating wealth for the nations. Both were taxing our profits at punitive rates. If you earned a dollar, you barely kept fifty cents. My main business at the time was in commodities. I was a substantial trader, taking large positions.

Three thousand lots is the equivalent of , tons of sugar. A movement of one US cent a pound would bring huge profits or losses. If I went long and wrong, or short and wrong, margin calls could easily wipe me out. And without deep reserves, I would be dangerously vulnerable to margin calls if our trading positions went sour. Although Singapore did not tax offshore trading profits, officials imposed extremely onerous conditions on you to prove that your profits were generated offshore.

They essentially regarded you as guilty until proven innocent. A tax audit was a bit like the Spanish Inquisition.

You only paid 17 per cent corporate tax, so you were better off by 33 cents on every dollar of profit. I shall stress that I had not — and indeed, have not — lost one iota of my affection for Singapore Since I was in the international sugar-trading business, with mobile operations it seemed almost irresponsible not to trade sugar from a low-tax base.

Tax policy plays a very important role in encouraging or discouraging business. Why would I want to hire an army of lawyers and accountants to avoid taxation? I should stress that I had not — and indeed, have not — lost one iota of my affection for Singapore. It is simply that it made more sense to base my operations in a low-tax jurisdiction like Hong Kong. His office would call my office at short notice when he had free time.

In an early session, Kuan Yew explained that he wanted to have chats with me because I had a good feel for the scene in Malaysia. He had an embassy in Kuala Lumpur, but he wanted a different perspective. I was always very frank with him. If he asked questions for which I had no answer, I would tell him so. We had many pleasant such sessions, sometimes over lunch. Hong Kong was a much bigger pond than Singapore or Malaysia.

I began to see very clearly that the CEOs of the top American, Japanese and European corporations were visiting Hong Kong, if not once a year, then once every two or three years. That was the pecking order. We had considered relocating part of our operations to Hong Kong from the s. I ask for volunteers.

Please give me your answer today. Two weeks from today, I want you to be in Hong Kong, ready to work. I asked Richard Liu to commute back and forth, like I was planning to do, to look after both sides of the business for at least a year.

I spent about seven to ten days a month in Hong Kong from , and then gradually it became 15 days a month, 21 days, until eventually I moved there in The executives who relocated to Hong Kong were allowed to apply for the first allotment of shares in the company.

Trading, of course, migrated with me; that was unavoidable, as I was the main trader. Within 20 years, Hong Kong has blossomed into by far the largest of our three group companies of Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Luckily or unluckily, I was born Chinese, and I have always remained very proud of being Chinese. The more I heard people call China backward, the more I felt we must show the rest of the world, some day, that China can be advanced.

I felt that I had something to offer my fellow Chinese: modern ways of thinking and management, and respect for the value that both sides brought to a business relationship. Robert Kuok at his office in Hong Kong, c However, our focus was most certainly not on China during the first few years after we moved to Hong Kong.

Kerry Holdings focused on supplying sugar and rice to Indonesia. After that, I plunged into the Hong Kong property market, then into warehousing and local stock-market investing. It is well known that Hong Kong property has created quite a few billionaires. In the hindsight of history, it is not hard to see why. My first visit to Hong Kong was in , when Joy and I were there on honeymoon.

We drove with a friend, Eddie Cheung, past the old Peninsula hotel in Kowloon. We had established a small office, and we rented apartments so that those of us who periodically came over from Singapore would have a place to stay.

When a two-year tenancy expired, the rent would always shoot up. The rising rents were creating a strong headwind for our business. We have to go into property investment. In the s, despite the rising rents, the cost was not that steep.

But, as China developed, it became very apparent that rents would continue to soar and soar. We decided not to stop at buying just one or two floors of office space or one or two apartments.

We branched into development. We built entire buildings, and then major integrated commercial and residential complexes. We have never looked back. A mural of Tunku Abdul Rahman in Malaysia. I have known all six.

The first, Tunku Abdul Rahman, had tremendous rhythm. He was a well-educated man, having graduated with a law degree from Cambridge. His mother was Thai, and he had that touch of Thai shrewdness, an ability to smell and spot whether a man was to be trusted or not.

Tunku was less mindful about administrative affairs. But he had a good number two in Tun Razak, who was extremely industrious, and Tunku left most of the paperwork to Razak. Tunku was like a strategist who saw the big picture.

He knew where to move his troops, but actually going to battle and plotting the detailed campaign — that was not Tunku. You handle it now. In my meetings with Tunku, he demonstrated some blind spots. He had a bee in his bonnet about communism. In Islam, we regard them as devils! And Communist China, you cannot deal with them, otherwise you are dealing with the devil! The Chinese are consorting with the devil. Their people are finished! Tunku travelled with a delegation of 15 Chinese businessmen who were good friends of his.

Then on his way out of China, he stopped in Hong Kong and we dined again. I asked him for his impressions. All of his old prejudices had vanished! He just said the trip had been an eye-opener.

His friends sometimes helped him, or they sent him a case of champagne or slabs of specially imported steak. He loved to grill steaks on his lawn and open champagne, wine or spirits. Tunku would also do favours for his friends, but he never adopted cronies. It seems the man had run into tax trouble and was being investigated by the tax department, and he had turned to Tunku for help. Tunku would do favours for his friends, but he never adopted cronies Tun Razak.

Siew Sin was apoplectic. Ismail took the letter, crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Now, by ignoring Tunku, you will continue to do your duty properly. Cronyism is different. In return, the leader hands out national favours to them.

A true leader is the chief trustee of a nation. If there is a lack of an established system to guide him, his fiduciary sense should set him on the proper course. A leader who practices cronyism justifies his actions by saying he wants to bring up the nation quickly in his lifetime, so the end justifies the means. He abandons all the General Orders — the civil-service work manual that lays down tendering rules for state projects.

Instead, he simply hands the projects to a Chinese or to a Malay crony. The arms of government-owned banks are twisted until they lend to the projects. Some of these cronies may even be fronting for crooked officials. Tunku was unnerved by the riots of May After the riots he was a different man. Parliament went into deep freeze. By the time the NOC was disbanded, Razak had been installed as prime minister. Tunku felt bewildered.

He had helped the country gain independence and had ruled as wisely as he could, yet the Malays turned against him for selling out to the Chinese. In fairness to Tunku, he had done nothing of the sort. He was a very fair man who loved the nation and its people. But he knew that, if you favour one group, you only spoil them. When the British ruled Malaya, they extended certain advantages to the Malays. Malay Sultans along with then Malayan High Commissioner Donald MacGillivray sign an agreement creating an independent Malaysia on August 5, in the official residence of the British high commissioner of Malaya.

When the Malays took power following independence on 31 August , more incentives were given to them. But there was certainly no showering of favours. All of that came later, after The riots of May 13, , were a great shock to the system, but not a surprise.

Extremist Malays attributed the poverty of many Malays to the plundering Chinese and Indians. Leaders like Tunku Abdul Rahman, who could see both sides, were no longer able to hold back the hotheads. The more thoughtful leaders were shunted aside and the extremists hijacked power. They chanted the same slogans as the hotheads — the Malays are underprivileged; the Malays are bullied — while themselves seeking to become super-rich.

When these Malays became rich, not many of them did anything for the poor Malays; the Chinese and Indians who became rich created jobs, many of them filled by Malays. I was waiting to see Tun Razak when a senior Malay civil servant whom I knew very well came along the corridor of Parliament House and buttonholed me.

Leave something for us poor Malays! Business was no longer clean and open. Previously, the government announced open tenders to the Malaysian public and to the world. If we qualified, we would submit a tender. If we won the contract, we would work hard at it, and either fail or succeed. I think eight or nine times out of ten we succeeded.

A senior civil servant friend But things were changing, veering more and more towards cronyism and favouritism. Hints of change were there even before the riots. Even among the Malays there were those who admitted their weaknesses and argued for harnessing the strength of the Chinese. Mind you, that may have created more problems. This might have been good for the Malaysian economy, but bad for the nation. Overall, the Malay leaders have behaved reasonably in running the country.

At times, they gave the Malays an advantage. Then, when they see that they have overdone it, they try to redress the problem. Their hearts are in the right place, but they just cannot see their way out of their problems. Since May 13, , the Malay leadership has had one simple philosophy: the Malays need handicapping. Now, what amount of handicapping? The Government laid down a simple structure, but the structure is full of loopholes.

My par value of 1 ringgit per share is today worth 8 ringgit. So shares are issued to the Malays, who now own 30 per cent. But every day after that, the Malays sell off their shares for profit.

A number of years pass and then one day the Malay community holds a Bumiputra Congress. They go and check on all the companies. Fortunately, the ministry usually acts as a fair umpire and throws out such unscrupulous claims. Why is it not robbery just because the government commits it? And when people raise objections, it is called fomenting racial strife, punishable by three years in jail. As a Chinese who was born and grew up in Malaysia and went to school with the Malays, I was saddened to see the Malays being misled in this way.

I felt that, in their haste to bridge the economic gap between the Chinese and the Malays, harmful short cuts were being taken. One of the side effects of their zeal to bridge the economic gap was that racism became increasingly ugly. I saw very clearly that the path being pursued by the new leaders after was dangerous. But hardly anyone was willing to listen to me. In most of Asia, where the societies are still quite hierarchical, very few people like to gainsay the man in charge.

This took place in September during the Muslim fasting month. Tun Razak, the second Prime Minister of Malaysia, was gravely ill with terminal leukaemia, for which he was receiving treatment in a London hospital. I went to Kuala Lumpur and sent word that I wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk. It is the fasting month. Come to my office at about half past one. Shortly afterwards, his father fell out with the then-Sultan of Johor and the family moved to the Siglap area of Singapore. My father would often spend weekends with Dato Onn.

Two or three years later, Hussein returned to Johor Bahru and we were classmates again at English College from to But he read widely and was very well informed. He was a natural born politician, a gifted orator in Malay and in English. He was a very shrewd man with a tremendous air of fine breeding even though he was not from Malaysian royalty.

When you were in his presence, you knew you were in the presence of someone great. Dato Onn would go on to found UMNO, the ruling party of Malaysia, and become one of the founders of the independent nation of Malaysia. He set a tone of racial harmony for the nation — and he practised it. Our families were close. So, I went to call on his son, my old friend Hussein Onn in His office was in a magnificent old colonial building, part of the Selangor Secretariat Building.

I climbed up a winding staircase and his aide showed me straight to his room. There was hardly another soul in that huge office complex. After greeting one another, I warmed up to my subject with Hussein very quickly. The other is the future of our nation. We all know he has gone to London for treatment. Do you mind if we pass on to the next subject?

Our fathers were the best of friends; our families have been the best of friends. In our young days, you and I always felt a strong passion for our country, which we both still feel. If there was damage done, we can repair it. What, in your mind, is the number of people required to run a society, a community, a nation with the land mass of Malaysia?

For the sake of time, I answered my own question. We are not talking in terms of hundreds of thousands or millions. To run a society or a nation requires, relatively speaking, a handful of people.

So let us say six or seven or eight thousand, Hussein. And of course this covers two sectors.