SharkNinja’s Billionaire Chinese Backer on Building an American Success Story

Many self-made billionaires conceal their humble beginnings. CJ Wang has put his front and center of his penthouse Hong Kong office: a small stone mill for grinding soybeans.Mao Zedong’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution was just winding down when Wang started school in what is today Yantai city of China’s eastern Shandong province. (Where, incidentally, TIME founder Henry Luce was born in 1898.) Like most neighborhood kids, Wang was obliged to help with household chores after class, especially churning soymilk by endlessly hauling his uncle’s giant stone mill around. It was labor that made the young Wang’s arms ache, though the eventual payoff would be a business empire worth tens of billions of dollars.After graduating in electrical engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University, Wang became a teacher like his parents. “It was what my family did so I just naturally fell into teaching,” he says, gazing out at sweeping views of Victoria Harbour. “But I always wanted to do something bigger and carve my own path.” In 1994, as Chinese reformer Deng Xiaoping’s market liberalization unleashed a heady entrepreneurial spirit across the People’s Republic, Wang quit his job at a vocational colle...