Zhang’s husband Liu Ming Chung, the CEO of Nine Dragons, is also a billionaire.
She saw value in something others discarded
In 1985, business tycoon Zhang Yin started a paper-trading business in Hong Kong with about 30,000 yuan, or 3,800 US dollars. More than two decades later, she would be named China’s richest person, with an estimated fortune of $3.4 billion on the 2006 Hurun Rich List. Zhang entered the paper trade when China was facing a shortage of paper-making raw material and its manufacturing industry was beginning to expand, according to a 2007 profile in The New York Times. She later arrived in Hong Kong from Guangdong in 1985 and started her own company with 30,000 yuan after turning down a job offer. As reported by The LA Times, Zhang began collecting waste paper in Los Angeles in 1990 and shipping it to China, where it was used to make cardboard needed by the country’s growing export industries. Her company, America Chung Nam, was already on track to ship about 3 million tons of waste paper in 2002, almost all of it to China. Speaking to reporters in Hong Kong in November 2006, she said: “I had to learn from scratch. In 1995, Dongguan Nine Dragons was established to manufacture containerboard in Dongguan, Guangdong, according to Nine Dragons’ own listing documents filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company’s first paper machine began production in July 1998. Its design capacity was 200,000 tonnes a year. Nine Dragons’ listing document says a second paper machine, with a design capacity of 400,000 tonnes a year, began production in June 2000. The company’s manufacturing capacity subsequently rose to 3.3 million tonnes a year by the time of its 2006 listing documents.
Paper recycles itself, generation after generation,” she told the NY Times. “It was my hard work that helped me achieve my success,” she added. The material at the centre of her business was something most people had already thrown away: waste paper. Zhang eventually built a business that collected recovered paper in the United States, shipped it to China and used it as raw material for paper and packaging products. In Hong Kong, she learned about the waste-paper business. Zhang recalled advice she had received from a man in the industry. “Wastepaper is like a forest. She began buying scrap paper through intermediaries in the United States. The business soon showed her that Hong Kong alone would not be enough. China’s growing manufacturing sector needed cardboard and packaging, while the United States had a much larger supply of used paper. So Zhang looked towards America. The operation was initially small. Zhang and her husband had driven around the United States in a used Dodge minivan, approaching garbage dumps for scrap paper. The couple had formed their US recycling company in the 1990s to collect paper and ship it to China. Zhang later described how difficult those early years were. The business was just my husband and me, and I didn’t speak a word of English. The expansion was rapid. This is the point at which Zhang’s business moved beyond simply collecting America’s discarded paper. Her companies were now involved in both sides of the process: sourcing recovered paper and manufacturing packaging paper in China.
The next major turning point came in 2006
Nine Dragons Paper was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on March 3, 2006, according to the company’s annual report. Hurun’s own 2006 report said that 49-year-old Zhang Yin had wealth of 27 billion yuan, making her China’s first female richest person. It also said Nine Dragons had a market value of 37.5 billion yuan and that Zhang owned 72% of the company. An AFP report put her fortune at approximately $3.4 billion. 1, according to the report.
Seven months later, Zhang appeared at the top of China’s Hurun Rich List. She had risen from 36th place the previous year to No. It also described her as the first woman to top China’s annual rich list.
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