Farewell, but no farewell, Liu

Editor's note: Liu Chuanzhi, founder of the world's largest personal computer maker, Lenovo, stepped down as chairman of Legend Holdings on Wednesday, and Ning Min, the current senior vice-president and chief financial officer, will be the new chairman. Beijing News comments:

Liu will serve as honorary chairman, senior adviser and a member of the board's strategy committee, thus contributing in a different way to the company, said a statement Lenovo issued the same day.

In the 1980s, Liu, widely viewed as a godfather-like entrepreneur, used to sell electronic watches and roller skates at a stall outside the Institute of Computer Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and peddled his business dream.

Over the next four decades, the young man who used to ride a bicycle on the streets of Beijing's technological hub of Zhongguancun, went on to build a national brand and the first Chinese tech company to complete the acquisition of a global computer giant.

Over the past 35 years, under Liu's leadership, Lenovo has built a number of listed companies, including Legend Holdings and Lenovo Group, which, together with Lenovo's continuous investment, helped set up the Lenovo business empire.

Liu has always been seen as the "eldest brother" of Chinese entrepreneurs, as generation after generation of entrepreneurs have emerged over the past decades.

But coexisting with the honors are controversies, from the 1994 dispute with Lenovo's chief engineer Ni Guangnan, over Lenovo's business direction and commercial model to endless debates within Lenovo in the ensuing years.

This made Liu, who wanted to retire several times, to bounce back again and again, making great efforts to turn the tide. People have increasingly realized that Liu is irreplaceable, either for Lenovo in transition or for China's business community as a whole.

If we look back at Liu's career as a corporate decision-maker, we will admire his classic viewpoints on management methodology in areas such as team-building, strategy-setting and team-leading. These three factors still decide whether an enterprise can continue to prosper. With his retirement, Liu will pass on these tasks to his successor.

There is always hope in challenges. When economic transformation and upgrading puts enterprises in the vortex of currents, for entrepreneurs, whoever can see farther into the future will lead his or her enterprise to success. What an enterprise needs is not only the experience of older-generation entrepreneurs, but also that of new-generation of entrepreneurs who are bold enough to emancipate minds, take risks and face up to the challenges. Spiritual inheritance seems to be more important than the inheritance of a business empire.

"There is no successful enterprise, there is only an enterprise of the times," as Zhang Ruimin, another representative of Chinese entrepreneurs and president of the Haier Group, put it.