One Billion Customers - James McGregor [1]
Shi Guangsheng Minister of trade from 1998 to 2003.
C. H. Tung A shipping company executive who was Hong Kong chief executive after the handover of Hong Kong to China from Britain in 1997. He resigned in 2005 due to deep unpopularity in China and Hong Kong.
Wang Qishan Most recently the mayor of Beijing and formerly president of China Construction Bank from 1994 to 1998. He oversaw the Morgan Stanley joint-venture investment bank, China International Capital Corporation (CICC). The son-in-law of Yao Yilin, who was vice-premier in charge of finance and economics from 1979 to 1993, Wang is also the godfather of China’s stock markets.
Wu Jichuan As the minister of the Ministry of Information Industry (and its predecessor, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications) from 1993 to 2003, he was known as China’s “telecom czar” and architect of the world’s largest telephone system.
Wu Yi Most recently vice-premier and health minister who served as trade minister from 1993 to 1997.
Zhao Weichen The first chairman of China Unicom and creator of the “Chinese-Chinese-Foreign” investment structure that gathered more than $1 billion in investment from international telecom companies without giving away any equity in China’s telephone operating system.
Zhao Ziyang The premier of China who was ousted after the Tiananmen Massacre and held under house arrest until he died in 2005. He was the architect of Deng’s first wave of reforms and mentor to a generation of Chinese reformers.
Zhou Enlai Mao’s right-hand man and longtime premier of China who is credited with working to curb many of Mao’s excesses. He died in 1976.
Zhou Xiaochuan Most recently governor of China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, he earlier served as China’s top securities regulator and chairman of China Construction Bank.
Zhu Rongji Premier of China from 1998 to 2003 who is credited with designing and implementing the country’s most significant financial and economic reforms.
Zou Jiahua The vice-premier of China in the 1990s who served as the key patron of Unicom and advocate for breaking the China Telecom monopoly of China’s telephone system.
U.S. and British Government Officials
Charlene Barshefsky The U.S. trade representative from 1997 to 2001 who engineered the U.S.-China agreement that led to China’s entry into the WTO.
George H. W. Bush The forty-first president of the United States, from 1989 to 1993, who had served as Nixon’s representative in China in 1974–75 and later personally ran China policy from the oval office as president.
George W. Bush The forty-third president of the United States, assuming office in 2001, who initially considered China a second-priority country for the United States in Asia because of its lack of democracy, but befriended China after the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon.
Bob Cassidy The U.S. trade representative’s chief negotiator for China’s accession to the WTO.
Warren Christopher The U.S. secretary of state from 1993 to 1997 who was strongly criticized by the American business community while carrying out Clinton’s policy of threatening to cancel China’s MFN status on human rights grounds.
Bill Clinton The forty-second president of the United States, from 1993 to 2001, who initially threatened to cancel China’s “most favored nation” trading status on human rights grounds but soon capitulated and oversaw successful U.S. efforts to bring China into the WTO.
Christopher Cox Republican congressman from California who headed the congressional committee that issued the hyperbolic “Cox report” on China’s systematic stealing of American nuclear and military technology, thereby igniting a frenzy of racism against Chinese in America.
Henry Kissinger Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state who negotiated and engineered Nixon’s rapprochement with China and later became a fixture in U.S.-China political and business relations.
Richard M. Nixon The thirty-seventh