A tale of 'Queen of Trash'
By David Barboza (IHT)Updated: 2007-01-16 14:26
Most of the world's richest women inherited their wealth: from the Walton sisters of Wal-Mart fame to the daughters of the men who created Mars candy bars, L'Oréal cosmetics and BMW.
But not Zhang. She started out from a modest background, the daughter of a military officer. Now she dominates the world's paper trade through her giant companies, one centered in Dongguan, just outside Hong Kong, and the other based in Los Angeles.
"She's a visionary," said Herman Woo, an analyst at BNP Paribas, which helped her large paper company list shares in Hong Kong. "She doesn't mind putting a lot of money in at the beginning, to build the company."
That company, Nine Dragons Paper, is now the biggest paper maker in China. It raised nearly US$500 million when it went public in Hong Kong last March.
Since then, shares of Nine Dragons have quadrupled, giving the company a market value of more than US$5 billion. The Zhang family controls 72 percent of the company, which makes it one of the richest families in China.
Zhang's smaller venture, America Chung Nam, which is based in Los Angeles, is one of the world's biggest paper trading companies, with ties to recycling yards in New York, Chicago and California.
No other U.S. company sends so much material to China, in as many containers, as America Chung Nam, which was named the top U.S. exporter to China by volume for the fifth consecutive year in 2005, according to Piers Global Intelligence, which tracks import and export data.
Now, with the paper industry shifting to China, where labor and land are cheaper, Zhang and Nine Dragons are vowing to take on the world's global paper giants, like International Paper, Weyerhauser and Smurfit Stone.
"My goal is to make Nine Dragons, in three to five years, the leader in containerboards," Zhang said emphatically during a short interview in her Hong Kong office. "My desire has always been to be the leader in an industry."
Zhang rarely grants interviews, and when she does, they are brief and controlled by an army of handlers.
Zhang does not go into detail about how she made her fortune. In a society known for close ties and hidden deals between government officials and business leaders, she says simply, "I'm an honest businesswoman."
Zhang was the oldest of eight children born into a military family from
northern Heilongjiang Province, near the Russian border. During the Cultural
Revolution, which began in 1966, her father was sent to prison, like millions of
others who were branded "counterrevolutionaries" or "capitalist roaders."
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