> Jia has one of those improbable-sounding but strangely common rags-to-riches stories of modern China. Born to modest means in Shanxi province in 1973, the third child of a teacher and a housewife, he landed a job in the local tax bureau in the mid-1990s, according to profiles of him published in the Chinese media.
> He quickly left to start a string of his own businesses, in sectors from coal to mobile phones.
Really, that is the default pattern for explaining how clerks with government jobs end up with such riches.
Have seen it happen many times in corrupt countries.
Judge or prosecutor on a $10k yearly salary builds a mansion house costing $2m+.
Even in my own extended family have an uncle who was in the Soviet military, relatively high rank. A few years after fall of the empire ends up with large duffel bags full of $100 bills. Rumor has it, he was implicated in selling SAMs to Syria and other ME countries. There was a trial but you see if you have duffel bags full of $100 bills you don't convicted.
While corruption is rampant in China, a low level clerk at a local tax office can't really leverage his position to do much.
Also, getting into business in China a couple decades ago (upto mid 90s) were quite easy, and coal business is one of the more lucrative ones, thanks to the lack of regulations and local competition.
> While corruption is rampant in China, a low level clerk at a local tax office can't really leverage his position to do much.
It depends, sometimes a low level clerk is a gatekeeper to higher level corruption, like a doorman if you wish. If there is not pre-existent relationship you need someone like that to make the initial contact. There is also nepotism, he could be low level, but because his uncle is high up the chain, he is a good conduit for those wanting to pay a bribe to contact, etc, etc.
More examples from a corrupt country. Long time ago, neighbor had a friend at a forensics and paternity testing clinic. He was a low level grunt but was corrupt as heck and was raking in tens of thousands per year both from criminal paying him to "not find evidence" and deadbeat dads and rapists for not finding "paternity" evidence. Talk about scum of the earth...
So sometimes rank is not proportional to profit from corruption.
WHERE IS YOUR PROOF??? It's more likely that ease of access to the Communist Party's information is more directly responsible in his progress than corruption. Why are you equating your family's experience in the USSR to what the Chinese experience anyway? These are totally different countries, experiences and philosophies.
The Atlantic has published several articles on Chinese society and government. Maybe you should try and read them.
Do you really need to capitalize and use 3 question marks to ask a question? Yes, let me get on a plane to China and investigate this guy, I'll get back you. Had you used only a single question mark I might have skipped that step, but you know 3 show you are serious....
> Why are you equating your family's experience in the USSR to what the Chinese experience anyway?
Because corruption work surprisingly similar in a lot of places? It is the unifying common ground humans have. They seem to corrupt in the same plain old boring ways.
Yeah, but that doesn't explain that much. What kind of coal / mobile phone business? Where did he get financing?
If the business is buying a truckful of coal / handful of phones and going around the village selling retail, he could have gotten finances by himself. But many people do that, and never manage to become billionaires.
Or he had access to some serious capital, usually not available to ordinary people. Either way, there is more to explain, how exactly do you go from the tax office to billionaire status.
I think the fact that he started businesses in those fields is somewhat self explanatory. What's so special about paypal, other than it was there for the rise of Internet 2.0 / ebay or whatever? Getting into coal and mobile phones before the past decade when both of these have exploded in growth is the same kind of thing.
Coal, at least, sounds like something that requires a great deal of upfront capital to establish. A business like Paypal, less so. The hard part for that is tying into payment systems, but that doesn't require a lot of upfront money, more a network effect.
So the question remains, where did this initial capital come from?
While you might find it hard to believe given all the negative sentiments echoed by Western media, in China there are lots of stories like this. I also know a lot of people that have done it this way. Not necessarily multi billionaire, but definitely rags to riches.
I think this is great, I hope more entrepreneurs follow in Musk's steps.
Having a electric car revolution of a mass scale would be great thing. China has a much higher population density compared to most parts of the world, an affordable electric car starting from China will attack the problem from the other end. The high-end being Tesla, the low-end being Faraday or any other manufacturer.
I look forward to what this Chinese billionaire does in this space.
This company does not do well in film production, “smart” TVs, video streaming, mobile phones, bicycles. But now it wants to make electric cars. It's really ridiculous.
Because I am from China. Smart TVs are their best products. But LeTV is still not a very famous brand. The quality is not good. I heard some LeTV died after a year. Its market share is still tiny. But this company just released android phones. I don't think LeTV phones are better than HTC, not to mention iPhone. I can't believe this company also produce bicycles, and now it wants to build cars. If a company wants to do everything, it can't do anything well.
It seems his plan of operation is to expand into as many possibly nouveau/profitable industries as possible. If successful, he might end up with something akin to a Samsung conglomeration of diverse product lines. Interested in how the established tech giants like Alibaba will respond to this. He certainly has an uphill battle
Does anyone have any figures on using coal to generate electricity to power a car for a day verse a days use of gasoline in terms of pollution? It's always been a wonder for me. Now given the idea of electric cars in china it seems more relevant.
Sounds like just every other conglomerate that popped riding the huge grow in the past decade while relying on government connections, but fails to deliver.
> He quickly left to start a string of his own businesses, in sectors from coal to mobile phones.
Not necessarily improbable. But incomplete.
1. Low paying clerk job
2. ?
3. Billionaire