RONG YIREN

born 1916 founder (in 1979) and president of China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC), China's largest investment company. Rong was educated at a British-run university, St. John's, in Shanghai, and was directing his family's flour, textile, and banking businesses when the Communists came to power in China in 1949. Though four of his six brothers left China, he remained and continued to run the family businesses, even after the government became a 50-percent partner in 1955. Even though Rong was not a Communist, he was appointed deputy mayor of Shanghai (1957) and deputy minister of the textile industry (1959). In 1966, however, when Mao Zedong began the Cultural Revolution, Rong was seized by Red Guards, beaten and assigned to menial jobs, and his business holdings were seized. With the rise in influence of Political Bureau reformer Deng Xiaoping seven years later, Rong once again became active in government affairs. In 1979 Deng asked him to help with China's new open door economic reforms. Rong formed CITIC to attract the foreign capital and skills needed to expand China's business interests and modernize its aging industries. Like a capitalist enterprise, the corporation runs a bank in competition with the government's bank, arranges loans, sells bonds in overseas markets (Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Frankfurt, Ger.), invests in and imports equipment for Chinese businesses, and owns businesses in other countries, including Australia, Canada, and the United States. Though in May 1989 Rong allowed his employees to participate in pro-democracy demonstrations, he later supported the government's military repression of the demonstrators. Rong served also as vice chairman of China's National People's Congress.