POVERTY AND AMBITION
Although his father was the head of a primary school in Guangdong province, Li had little opportunity for formal education. He was 12 years old in 1940 when his family fled the Japanese invasion of China. Within three years of their arrival in Hong Kong, his father had died, and the teenage Li was helping to support the family by selling plastic watchbands and belts.
Li proved to be a capable salesman and started his own plastics factory in Hong Kong in 1950. By 1958 he had a flourishing business manufacturing plastic flowers and was ready to expand. He named the firm Cheung Kong Industries, after the Cheung Kong River—also known as the Yangtze—the longest river in China. The name was reportedly an allusion to both the river's many tributaries and the need for business alliances.
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