On the morning of Oct. 25, 2018, Doctor Lui Che-woo, Chairman of K. Wah Group and his wife Ms. Lvzhao Jinping as well as other families were present at Tsinghua University and announce to donate RMB 200 million to Tsinghua University. Prof. Chen Xu, Party Secretary and Prof. Yang Bin, Vice President of Tsinghua University concluded the donation agreement with Doctor Lui Che-woo on behalf of Tsinghua University and Tsinghua University Education Foundation, respectively. After the signing ceremony, at the “Leaders of Chinese Entrepreneurs-Tsinghua Lecture” chaired by Prof. Long Denggao, Director of CCES, Doctor Lui Che-woo had a wonderful dialogue with Prof. Yang Bin, Vice President of Tsinghua University centering on the title of “the way to successful leaders: practice with concerted efforts”, and answered questions by audiences from Tsinghua and other organizations during the interaction activity.
Picture 1: Doctor Lui Che-woo, Chairman of K. Wah Group and Director of Lui Che-woo Charity
Picture 2: Doctor Lui Che-woo, Secretary Chen Xu and Vice President Yang Bin concluded the donation agreement
Lui Che-woo was born in 1929 in Xinhui, Guangdong Province, No.1 hometown of overseas Chinese in China. His great-grandfather emigrated to the United States in the 14th Year of Guangxu Administration in Qing Dynasty (1888), returned to China in 1934 three generations later and become the top rich man in local area. In 1937, his family migrated to Hong Kong. In the juvenile period, he witnessed chaos and miserable conditions caused by wars and poverty and backwardness of China. It is still hard for Doctor Lui Che-woo to forget the scenes and he could not speak for sobbing thereby. So it became his strong power of life to realize awakening and salvation of the nation and struggle for them. He thinks that the reasons why China was backward and vulnerable to attack were the less opportunities of access to education for common people, which is also the reason why he made donations to higher education. Doctor Lui Che-woo ardently sent a message to Tsinghua students on developing macro thinking, broadening international horizon and working together to drive sustainable development of the world.
Doctor Lui Che-woo’s life and career reflect the economic development courses of Mainland China and Hong Kong in particular, and he has been brave in pioneering at every stage of development of Hong Kong and Mainland China. During days of the war, juvenile Lui Che-woo started a business for living. In the post-war period, he ran transit trade in Hong Kong.
In 1955, he established K. Wah Group, when Hong Kong was on the track of high-speed industrialization, and he became the pioneer driving Hong Kong’s stones and building materials towards modernization. Later, K. Wah Group provided one third of stones and building materials for infrastructure and housing works in Hong Kong, making a great contribution to urban construction of the City.
In late 1970s, being far-sighted and forward-looking, he began to make investment in hotels in Hong Kong. After the reform and opening-up of Mainland China in the 1980s, he started his investments in the Mainland and marched toward Singapore, Thailand and the USA as well as other regions. At the beginning of the 21st century after Macao’s return to China, he entered the gaming and amusement industry, and the Galaxy Entertainment under his group became the first listed gaming operator with the license in Macao.
According to remarks of Prof. Long Denggao, Chinese entrepreneurs in the generation of Doctor Lui Che-woo, Li Ka-shing and YK Pao rose in the course of high-rate economic growth of Hong Kong, and replaced British entrepreneurs in the 1980s to become leading powers in Hong Kong. Over his business career of 60 years, Lui Che-woo met challenges and took opportunities one after another, and kept pace with the times, finally establishing its group into a diversified international enterprise today, with core businesses covering real estate, amusement and recreation, hotel and building materials, etc.
When answering a student’s question of whether business success means a success in life, Doctor Lui thought that it is the most important for any person to do things valuable to society. Only recognition by society is the greatest success; to another question of which is more important among personal ties, spirit and family tradition, Doctor Lui offered his answer, thinking that society is the most critical and that while enjoying the overall environment of society, helping others is the highest realm; when being asked of his expectancy of Tsinghua University, Doctor Lui answered: Tsinghua University now ranks No.1 in Asia, but faces larger space for the development of medicine, including how to realize combination of TCM and Western medicine and how traditional Chinese medicine will develop in the future. Currently, human is haunted by many incurable diseases, so universities are hoped to make more efforts to study and tackle difficulties concerned, so as to benefit mankind; as for the reasons why the “Lui Che-woo Prize—Prize for World Civilization” was created, Doctor Lui said that the world has entered a moment most favorable for development, from the electric age to the telecommunication times till current AI era. We should now give attentions to the green times. While developing the world, human badly devastated environment. For a better future, we must well maintain the environment which we are enjoying. In terms of the secret of success, Doctor Lui held that the most important is to be kind and gentle with people, and keeping a gentle mentality is the most critical.
The dialogue between Doctor Lui Che-woo and Prof. Yang Bin won warm applause from the audiences. Many people participated in the “Leaders of Chinese Entrepreneurs - Tsinghua Lecture”, including Zhang Xiaoming, Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of The State Council, Qiao Xiaoyang, former Vice Secretary-General of the National People’s Congress, Yuan Wei, Secretary-General of Tsinghua University Education Foundation, several senior executives of K. Wah Group, and more than 160 teachers and students from Tsinghua University”.
After the speech, Qiu Yong, Academician and President of Tsinghua University, met Doctor Lui Che-woo, extended thanks to him and his families for their long-term supports to Tsinghua. Qiu Yong introduced to Doctor Lui and the guests present at the Lecture the progress of Tsinghua in training high-level talents, driving inter-discipline research and moving ahead with global strategy in recent years. Qiu Yong expressed that China is now in an important age of development, and Tsinghua is enjoying the best period for development. Tsinghua will continuously work on addressing critical problems that China even the world face, constantly train excellent talents as necessary in society, and keep making major breakthroughs and research achievements able to lead the future, influence the world and benefit mankind.
Picture3: Dialogue between Doctor Lui Che-woo and Prof. Yang Bin, Vice President of Tsinghua University on “The Way to Be a Successful Leaders: Practice with Concerted Efforts”
Picture 4: Doctor Lui Che-woo makes a donation for building the Bio-medicine Center, Tsinghua University and shares the values of practice with concerted efforts
Picture 5: Qiu Yong, Academician and President of Tsinghua University, meets Doctor Lui Che-woo and his party
(By Xing Jinghua, CCES)
