Helen Deng

    IN early 1992, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping gave his full support to reform and opening up when inspecting Shenzhen. His speeches during the inspection changed many lives, including that of Zhu Baoguo.

    “I still remember it was on Jan. 18, 1992 that Deng Xiaoping began his inspection. After the Spring Festival of 1992, I came to Shenzhen with a deputy because we had a plan to set up a factory here,” Zhu recalled.

    Zhu, then still in his 20s, was already quite successful in Xinxiang, Central China’s Henan Province; with 5,000 yuan (about US$790), he bought a small chemical factory on the verge of bankruptcy and made it profitable.

    Zhu first came to Shenzhen on a business trip in 1990. “As soon as I saw the city, I felt an impulse to set up a business here,” he said. Shenzhen was quite underdeveloped at the time. The area that is now the central business district in Futian was then made up of farms and ponds. However, the spirit of innovation was pervasive. After Deng Xiaoping’s inspection in 1992, Zhu made up his mind.

    Getting started

    in the health-care business

    Zhu came to Shenzhen with a recipe he bought from a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Xinxiang. The recipe could improve women’s skin and Zhu believed that it would be of great market value.

    In the early 1990s it was very difficult to get bank loans, and Zhu started a factory with a 5-million-yuan, high-interest loan from an individual.

    “During the most difficult time, I had no money to pay the employees and they were talking about leaving,” he said. Zhu told the employees that he could either sell machines to pay their wages, or save the factory and pay the wages later with interest. The employees chose the latter and the company survived its most difficult time.

    On March 8, 1993, “Taita Beauty Essence,” a beautifying, food-supplement drink based on Zhu’s recipe, was launched and soon became wildly popular in the whole country. In the next year, its sales volume reached 160 million yuan. It continues to be popular.

    From food supplement to medicine

    The food supplement business was highly profitable, but Zhu would not stop at that. His childhood dream was to be a medical practitioner. When becoming a medical practitioner became impossible, he decided to enter the pharmaceutical sector.

    Starting from 1993, Zhu began to eye the pharmaceutical sector and has been in the profession ever since. In the peak time of the real estate industry, his friends tried to talk him into entering the industry, but he refused. “A good entrepreneur should focus on his area. If you only look at making easy money, you will never grow up,” he said.

    In 1997, Zhu bought Shenzhen Haibin Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. for 280 million yuan and thus began his first step toward building a modern pharmaceutical company. The next year, Haibin Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. became the largest production base of antibiotics Meropenem.

    In 2001, Taita Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company raised 1.7 billion yuan, a record-high for a private company in China at the time.

    Soon Zhu bought Eagle, a Hong Kong food supplement brand. It also became the biggest share holder of Lizhu Group, a pharmaceutical company with annual sales doubling that of Taitai Pharmaceutical.

    Ambition to build a pharmaceutical empire

    In 2003, Zhu changed the name of Taita Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. to Joincare Pharmaceutical Industry Group Co., Ltd.

    Zhu’s plan is to make Joincare into a pharmaceutical empire worth 100 billion yuan in 20 years. “The Chinese biological industry began at the same time as the West. This gives us a good opportunity,” he said.

    Zhu said he was busy almost every day in Shenzhen. “But I always have time for scientists,” he said. Once he canceled a meeting with a banker to meet a Chinese-Canadian scientist who was transferring planes at Shenzhen International Airport. They chatted for two hours. “We discussed the latest technology in the pharmaceutical field and I learned much that proved to be helpful,” he said.

    In retrospect, Zhu said that starting up a business in Shenzhen in 1992 was the most important and best decision of his life. “If I had not come to Shenzhen, my business would not have grown to today’s scale,” he said. “Shenzhen has a highly developed market economy, smart people, and latest information. In this innovative city, if you set a target and continue to work toward it, everything is possible,” he said.