
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Chris Bowlby profiles the British-educated Chinese property billionaire Zhang Xin, one of the most powerful women in business. She is in advanced talks to buy 40 per cent of Manhattan's iconic General Motors building.
Zhang Xin stands out as the high-profile CEO of the prominent, upmarket property developer SoHoChina, which she founded with her husband. Unusually for Chinese billionaires, she is also a philanthropist and speaks out about issues ranging from democracy to smog, in the international media and on her micro-blog.
A rags to riches story, she grew up in very modest circumstances, particularly after her Chinese-Burmese translator parents split up, and her mother moved her from Beijing to a tiny room in Hong Kong, where she worked in a factory.
After saving up for the airfare to the UK, she was then educated at Sussex and Cambridge universities, worked for Goldman Sachs, and returned to China where she built up her business with her husband.
What motivates this billionaire mother-of-two to carry on working, particularly as property developers are often reviled in China?
By BBC Radio 44.1
9797 ratings
Chris Bowlby profiles the British-educated Chinese property billionaire Zhang Xin, one of the most powerful women in business. She is in advanced talks to buy 40 per cent of Manhattan's iconic General Motors building.
Zhang Xin stands out as the high-profile CEO of the prominent, upmarket property developer SoHoChina, which she founded with her husband. Unusually for Chinese billionaires, she is also a philanthropist and speaks out about issues ranging from democracy to smog, in the international media and on her micro-blog.
A rags to riches story, she grew up in very modest circumstances, particularly after her Chinese-Burmese translator parents split up, and her mother moved her from Beijing to a tiny room in Hong Kong, where she worked in a factory.
After saving up for the airfare to the UK, she was then educated at Sussex and Cambridge universities, worked for Goldman Sachs, and returned to China where she built up her business with her husband.
What motivates this billionaire mother-of-two to carry on working, particularly as property developers are often reviled in China?

7,728 Listeners

367 Listeners

881 Listeners

1,042 Listeners

5,487 Listeners

1,814 Listeners

1,809 Listeners

1,067 Listeners

1,929 Listeners

522 Listeners

47 Listeners

77 Listeners

35 Listeners

61 Listeners

128 Listeners

163 Listeners

43 Listeners

74 Listeners

101 Listeners

4,177 Listeners

3,183 Listeners

756 Listeners

114 Listeners

3,100 Listeners

41 Listeners