Zhang Yin - China's Leading Woman Entrepreneur

The company's share price quadrupled from the IPO price of HK$ 3.40 to HK$ 14 by November 2006, and Zhang became one of the richest women in China by the virtue of her 72% equity holding in the company. (Refer to Exhibit II for the Stock Price Chart of Nine Dragons).

On Zhang topping the list of the richest people in China, The Observer¹⁰ wrote, "She seems an eloquent symbol of the new China; a capitalist whose success and wealth was unthinkable before Deng Xiaoping freed China from the embrace of Maoism in 1978. It is capitalists such as her who are proof that paradoxically it is communist China that is home to the globe's most vigorous capitalism. And she is a woman."¹¹

Though her father was in the army, the family faced some troubled times. Her father was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution¹². Zhang and her mother worked in a textile factory to support the family. As Zhang said, "In those days, we only had meat to eat on holidays. But the lack of material things made me appreciate the value of possessions. My parents always encouraged us to face life and solve our problems independently."¹³ After leaving the army, Zhang Deen joined a metallurgy firm in Guangdong province. Zhang moved to Shenzhen in the early 1980s, when economic reforms had just begun in China. She started working in a foreign paper products trading company, in its finance department.