Mou Qizhong

Mou Qizhong ( Chinese  牟其中 , Pinyin Móu Qízhōng ; * 1941 in Wanxian, Sichuan Province (now Wanzhou , Chongqing City ), People's Republic of China ) is a Chinese entrepreneur and profiteer. Considered the richest man in mainland China in the late 1990s , he was arrested in 1999 and sentenced to a long prison term in 2000.

Mou was born the son of poor farmers, but claimed as a youth that his father was a major financier in Chongqing before 1949. He had a great talent for speaking, but his plan to become a journalist failed. After graduating from school, he worked in a glass factory, where he was involved in all discussions and activities. During the Cultural Revolution , Mou was recognized for his article Where Is China Going? (中国 向何处去) sentenced to prison and later to the death penalty, which he narrowly avoided. In 1979 he was released from prison.

One of four Tupolevs imported by Mou at Beijing Airport

In the new political climate of the early 1980s, Mou was the first private entrepreneur in Sichuan Province, producing nothing, just trading by finding attractive markets for products. Among other things, he had an underutilized army factory copy 10,000 table clocks from a Shanghai brand, which he bought for 25  yuan and resold to a trading company in Shanghai for 32 yuan. The deal earned him 70,000 yuan in profit in 1983 and a year in prison for speculation and profiteering. In 1992 Mou sold 500 wagon loads of cheap groceries and electronics to Russia and received four Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft as payment . He sold these on to Sichuan Airlines . He made a profit of $ 11 or $ 18 million through this barter. As the owner of Nande Economic Group, registered in Tianjin in 1991 , his fortune was valued at 800 million yuan in 1994, compared with virtually penniless a few years earlier.

Mou acted as a sponsor for soccer teams, New Year celebrations, the first Chinese expedition to the North Pole or the Chinese space program . However , he was unable to realize more ambitious plans such as the purchase of a Russian aircraft carrier for the Chinese Navy , the transformation of the border town of Manzhouli into a trade hub between Russia and China or the leveling of the Himalayas to improve the climate in western China. When the People’s Republic's economic growth slowed in the late 1990s, Mous’s company went bankrupt and could no longer pay its employees’ salaries. In January 1999, Mou and several members of his family were arrested for trying to obtain a $ 75 million bank loan for their company on behalf of the state-owned Hubei Light Industrial Import and Export. In 2000, Mou was sentenced to life imprisonment for fraud and all political rights were revoked. The sentence was later reduced to 18 years in prison.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Weidong Zhang: Mou, Qizhong . In: Wenxian Zhang and Ilan Alon (Eds.): Biographical Dictionary of New Chinese Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders . Edward Elgar, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84720-636-7 , pp. 122-123 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} 牟其中 巨骗 的 台前 幕后. sina.com.cn, November 5, 1999, accessed February 25, 2020 (Chinese). 

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Mou is the family name here, Qizhong is the first name.