Li Jinyuan (businessman)

Li Jinyuan was born in Cangzhou, Hebei Province, in 1958.[2] He dropped out of school at the age of 14 and worked in an oilfield for two years before starting in business on his own account.[3] He has an MBA from Nankai University.[2]

Li Jinyuan during a product launch in India 2018

Li founded Tiens Group, a direct seller of healthcare products, in Tianjin in 1995.[2] It was reported in 2015 that the company had 12,000 employees.[4] He is now chairman and chief executive.[5]

In 2011, Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at $1.2B US,[2] making him the 24th richest person in China at that time.[4]

He received press attention in 2015 when he took 6,400 of his employees on holiday to France at a cost of £24m.[4] Li was pictured greeting his employees at the opening parade standing in a United States Army jeep.[6] The event required the booking of 140 hotels in Paris, and 7,600 tickets on France's high-speed TGV trains to transport his staff to the French coast where over 4,000 rooms were required in hotels in Monaco and Cannes.[4] The visit was described by the International Business Times as an "expensive gesture" that demonstrated the "growing economic power of China".[7]

According to Forbes, Li has created a Tiens Beijing International Charitable Foundation with an endowment of approximately $100 million and also provided $100 million to start a private school in Tianjin known as the Tianshi College which in 2011 enrolled over 3,000 students.[2]

The Economic Times reported in 2016 that Li had "contributed generously to flood and tsunami-relief efforts and the fight against the SARS virus".[3]