In novels, we often see such a plot: the male protagonist's father was pitted by a supporting role, resulting in a wrong decision-making, and the company fell apart in an instant.
The male protagonist took a loan of hundreds of millions, started from the bottom, worked hard little by little, met nobles, and finally paid off the debts and led the family back to the top.
And in reality it is not a novel, but in reality there are more ups and downs than the novel, his father owes 20 billion in debt, a figure that even a novel dare not write.
However, with his own efforts and the help of nobles, he successfully revitalized the company through his own trading, and when the company turned over, he sold the company's shares, and made 30 billion yuan from it.
The son of the king of ships, a century-old family
Tung Chee-hwa, born in 1937, ancestral home in Zhoushan, Zhejiang, was born in Zhoushan, Zhejiang, when he was 10 years old, he moved to Hong Kong with his family, and has since settled in Hong Kong. His father is a Chinese ship king who is as famous as Bao Yuhua, and Dong Haoyun, one of the world's seven ship kings.
At that time, Hong Kong was still under British rule, all key enterprises were British-owned, and China's shipping industry was monopolized by the British.
Dong Haoyun was born in that turbulent era, and he saw with his own eyes how China, once the lion of the East, was broken by the Western powers.
He wanted to break the monopoly and build a shipping company that belonged to the Chinese.
Because he knows very well that if the Chinese do not have their own shipping companies, if all the shipping in China is in the hands of foreigners, then China's economy is undoubtedly choked, after all, the profits of shipping reach unimaginable.
With this idea, Dong Haoyun held his breath in his heart and founded OOCL, he refused foreign investment, and insisted and stubbornly wanted to build a shipping company that belongs exclusively to Chinese and China.
He wants to let China's shipping industry never be caught in the hands of others again, and he wants to re-erect China's broken backbone!
And he, succeeded.
Dong Haoyun, who founded the China Orient Overseas Container Shipping Company, owned 149 vessels with a gross tonnage of 11 million tons, which was not as good as Bao Yuhua's Global Group, but it was also one of the top shipping companies.
Tung Chee-hwa, who lived in such a wealthy family, did not fall into the bad habit of being a gentleman, on the contrary, he studied hard in Britain since he was a child, and in 1960, he obtained a bachelor of science degree in maritime engineering from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom.
The University of Liverpool is a world-class university and one of the red brick universities in the UK. Tung Chee-hwa, who was able to be admitted to this school and successfully obtained a bachelor's degree in maritime engineering from here and graduated from it, is naturally self-evidently excellent.
After completing his studies, Tung Chee-hwa returned to Hong Kong and joined his father's Orient Overseas Company.
In the 50s and 60s of the last century, when OOCL was officially booming, the momentum of rapid development was like a wolf that saw a mountain of meat in front of it.
And Tung Chee-hwa, who worked in his father's company, as a junior director of the company, Tung Chee-hwa was in the limelight during that time.
But all of this began to change in the 80s.
Suddenly suffered a catastrophe and took a sharp turn
In 1972, Dong Haoyun spent a huge amount of money to purchase the Queen Elizabeth luxury passenger liner as a "maritime school", which was originally a decision for Dong Haoyun to take OOCL to the next level.
However, when the Queen Elizabeth was in the harbor for the final refit, a fire broke out and sank in the sea after a few days of fire.
This incident is bad news for both Dong Haoyun and OOCL. Not only did it lose a lot of money, but it also made it impossible for OOCL to turn over its funds for a while.
Originally, according to Dong Haoyun's worth, even if there is such a huge funding gap, it can still be survived. However, there are unforeseen circumstances in the sky, and people have good and bad luck.
In 1973, the third Middle East war broke out, oil prices rose sharply, the oil crisis broke out, many shipping companies had no business to do, and a large number of ships docked at the port.
In order to prevent the ship from being scrapped, it is also necessary to maintain the ship at any time, and the port of call also needs to pay a fee.
As a result, since the oil crisis, most shipping companies have been losing money and indebted, which is undoubtedly worse for OOCL, which is already in an economic crisis.
The multiple blows made Dong Haoyun, who was already in poor health, admitted to the hospital in advance. For the better development of OOCL, Dong Haoyun retired early and gave up the position of chairman of the company to his son Tung Chee-hwa.
Tung Chee-hwa was ordered to be in danger, but just when he had not yet figured out how to make the company into a predicament, an even more desperate news came.
Dong Haoyun's previous decision to acquire a mega-ton oil tanker has been successfully acquired, and the debt value of OOCL is as high as 20 billion.
Blessings are incomparable, and disasters are not singular. The already scarred Dong family was once again hit by bad news: Dong Haoyun, the former chairman of OOCL and the pillar of the Dong family, died of a heart attack in 1982 at the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital.
The death of his father is undoubtedly the biggest bad news for the Tung Chee-hwa brothers. Without his father's support and the protection of his father's reputation, those creditors surrounded the brothers like wolves, waiting for an opportunity to bite off a piece of meat.
And in that era, 20 billion was undoubtedly an unimaginable astronomical number. The two Tung Chee-hwa brothers were almost in despair.
Wisdom breaks through the predicament, and the peak turns around
Faced with a debt of 20 billion yuan, the Tung Chee-hwa brothers clearly knew that they could not afford to pay them off if they sold them, but they could not fall.
Because behind them, there are also their lovers and children, and if they fall, then those vicious creditors will really tear their families apart.
As the old saying goes, wisdom must be born in an emergency, and under heavy pressure, Tung Chee-hwa thought of a method that might be able to break through the predicament, but this method needed someone to help.
With the mentality of giving it a try, Tung Chee-hwa found Li Ka-shing and Fok Ying-tung, who were also wealthy people in Hong Kong at that time, to help.
Everyone must know who Li Ka-shing is, but what about Fok Yingdong? Maybe few people know him, but his grandson must be familiar to everyone, and that is the husband of the diving queen Guo Jingjing, Huo Qigang.
At that time, Fok Ying-tung had a very good relationship with Dong Haoyun, and even after Dong Haoyun died, he wrote a special letter to encourage Tung Chee-hwa to persevere and not give up, which moved Tung Chee-hwa very much.
Therefore, when Tung Chee-hwa wanted to complete that method, the first person found Fok Ying-tung.
At first, Fok Ying-tung, who had just heard about Tung Chee-hwa's plan, did not want to take this risk.
But in the face of this friend's child's bitter pleading, Huo Yingdong couldn't do it coldly and ignored it.
In the end, at Tung Chee-hwa's sincere request, Fok Ying-tung gritted his teeth and took out more than a billion US dollars to take a stake in the Orient Overseas Company, helping the Company to reorganize.
After Fok Ying-tung injected capital, Tung Chee-hwa went to Li Ka-shing again, and after thinking about it for a while, the scheming Li Ka-shing also took out some of the money and quietly injected capital into Orient Overseas Company.
At that time, the regulations of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, so many people did not know that Li Ka-shing also injected capital into OOCL.
This was finally revealed in 2003 when the Hong Kong Stock Exchange changed its system, and until now, Li Ka-shing also holds a 4% stake in OOCL.
In the face of the help of the two tycoons in the face of the short-term crisis resolution, Tung Chee-hwa is not only grateful, but also grateful. And the best reward for this kind of kindness is to let the value of the shares in the hands of the two increase instead of falling.
With the capital injection of the two tycoons, Tung Chee-hwa is like a dragon meeting water and a tiger entering the mountains and forests.
In just 10 years, the company turned its profits into profits, gradually paid off its debts, and with the end of the war and the recovery of the industry, OOCL was finally on the right track.
In the mid-90s, Tung Chee-hwa left OOCL and became a member of the Advisory Committee on the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.
Although Tung Chee-hwa stepped down, his influence on OOCL was extremely far-reaching, not only leading OOCL back on track, but also increasing his market value.
After the crisis ended, Tung Chee-hwa did not become strangers with Li Ka-shing and Fok Ying-tung, but the relationship became better and better.
Most of the cooperation between Tung Chee-hwa and Fok Ying-tung was in political circles.
At that time, Tung Chee-hwa wanted to abandon business and enter politics, but many people were not optimistic, and he himself was beating a drum in his heart, but only with Fok Ying-tung's strong support and full help, Tung Chee-hwa was finally elected.
When the Fok Ying-tung family had a problem, it was Tung Chee-hwa who reciprocated the favor and helped.
After Fok Ying-tung's death, when his children fought over the family property, it was Tung Chee-hwa who intervened to mediate, so that no greater tragedy was caused.
The cooperation with Li Ka-shing is more commercial, and the Oriental Plaza in Beijing is a joint project between Li Ka-shing and Tung Chee-hwa.
And this project is still the most profitable urban complex in Beijing, with about 3 billion yuan in rent every year, and in that year, they only invested 2 billion US dollars.
Through this cooperation, Li Ka-shing also got acquainted with Zhou Kaixuan, which laid a solid foundation for Li Ka-shing to reach a higher level in business in the later period.
Later, Li Ka-shing's son, Li Zekai, wanted to develop a cyberport in Hong Kong, and he came to Tung Chee-hwa.
But after inspecting Li Zekai, he nodded and agreed to Li Zekai's request for investment. As the son of Li Ka-shing, Li Zekai did not embarrass his father, but made Cyberport a result that everyone expected.
In the same way, Tung Chee-hwa, who invested in Li Zekai's Cyberport, also received tremendous feedback.
After that, Tung Chee-hwa rose all the way up, and as early as 2005, he became the vice chairman of the 10th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
In 2017, Tung Chee-hwa, who has become the vice chairman of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, made an astonishing decision, he decided to sell all the shares of his family OOCL to COSCO Shipping Holdings, and directly made 30 billion yuan.
From a loss of 20 billion yuan to a profit of 30 billion yuan, Tung Chee-hwa's contribution in this regard cannot be ignored. But what can't be ignored is the strong support of Hong Kong's two richest people.
Some people say that the more than one billion dollars that Fok Ying-tung took out is not his own worth, and some people suspect that it was Tung Chee-hwa who was injected by a mainland consortium through Fok Ying-tung. After all, at the beginning, many key enterprises were foreign-funded enterprises.
Since the Sino-British negotiations were finalized in 1984, in order to prevent the huge impact of the total withdrawal of British capital, Hong Kong tycoons and mainland consortia have come together to stabilize these important enterprises and turn them into Chinese-funded enterprises.
At that time, Dong Haoyun was very sad to see the monopoly of foreign capital and the situation that state-owned enterprises were not strong, so he made up his mind to establish OOCL.
Therefore, OOCL was a small number of Chinese enterprises at that time, which had very strong strategic significance. From this point of view, protecting and saving OOCL is not only to save the Dong family, but also to save the country.
Then, the help and help of the mainland consortium and the capital injection of Huo Yingdong and others can be understood, after all, at that time, when the country was in danger of survival, no matter what kind of contradictions there were between them, saving the country was the most important thing in everyone's hearts.
Time has gradually passed in the long river of history, and the truth and the story behind those things can only wait for future generations to speculate.
When we sit on the sofa, eat melon seeds, swipe our mobile phones, and watch TV series based on the events of that year, we may be able to guess some information hidden in the story and history.
Maybe people don't care about what they did back then, but we can't forget how in that turbulent and unstable era, businessmen who are essentially profit-oriented, invariably took out funds and didn't want the consequences to help a company with a debt of 20 billion yuan.
Just to prevent the purely Chinese-funded enterprises from falling, just so that the backbone of China at that time could stand proudly in the forest of the world.