Business magnate's Chinese roots key feature of new book

Chinese-Indonesian tycoon Mochtar Riady shares with readers his life's journey and wisdom in his autobiography. The Chinese edition was published recently.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"Most autobiographies seldom dedicate so many pages or chapters to the writer's children or grandchildren, but Dr Riady has done so," Minny Riady, general manager of Lippo Group's Shanghai division, and the youngest daughter of Mochtar Riady, tells China Daily.

"I believe when he wrote his autobiography, he had in mind a concept he often spoke about－a strong family or even a strong country is created from strong descendants," she adds.

He has tried to share with the reader his life's journey and wisdom, so as to inspire them to achieve more than what he achieved in business and society, the daughter says.

She says it was difficult for a Chinese descendant like her father to achieve remarkable success in Indonesia.

But Mochtar Riady says that hard work and prudence, plus the idea that "I know I do not know", are the reasons behind his many achievements.

Born and raised in the Indonesian cities of Batu and Malang in a family from East China's Fujian province, he received his higher education at Nanjing's former National Central University in the 1940s. He moved to Jakarta in 1954 to pursue his dream of becoming a banker. He first ran a small bank and later Bank Central Asia, one of Indonesia's largest.

He established the Lippo Group in the 1980s, making it an international company in the following decades. He had also predicted in the 1990s that China would rise again.

"What I did back then was invest in China, mainly as a person of Chinese origin," Mochtar Riady says. "Now I'm keen to introduce Chinese industrial capacity-building to other countries."

In a chapter on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, he says China will devote its time toward a shared prosperous future with other countries.

Wang Qiaozhen, editor of the Chinese version, hopes the book not only works as a case study for management students, but also appeals to general readers.