Cho Tak Wong is a contemporary entrepreneur and philanthropist of great renown.
From contracting to take over near-bankruptcy township enterprises in the 1980s to leading the world’s largest automotive glass supplier today, Cho has counted people’s needs as his own responsibility when making each decision and kept abreast with the development of the times. In his 40-year-long entrepreneurial career, he has led Fuyao Group to stay true to its original aspiration, focus on the main business, secure a stable operation and continue innovation, thereby presenting the world with a China-based global brand.
Born to a humble family before the founding of the PRC, Cho dropped out of school in early childhood. He started work at the age of 15, and served once in construction sites and farms. When the Reform and Opening up policy was carried out nationwide in 1978, Cho acted as a purchasing agent for the special-shaped glass factory in Gaoshan Town, Fuqing County, Fujian Province. Paralyzed by backward production conditions and market consciousness, the factory had seen a financial deficit for a succession of years and come to the brink of closing. As a response to the No. 1 Document, issued by the central government in 1983 to permit individual contracting to run township enterprises, Cho took over the dying factory. By implementing the performance-based wage system and expanding production, he managed to turn losses into profits in the very first year.
A keen market consciousness and a high sense of patriotism allowed Cho to reveal that automotive glasses, almost all imported from other countries at that time, would seriously limit the development of China’s automobile industry and the improvement of people’s living standards. For this reason, Cho aspired to “make homemade glasses for the Chinese.” He established a small joint venture (predecessor of Fuyao Group) based on his former glass factory in 1987. In 1993, he had this JV, which was devoted to the making of automotive glasses, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Fuyao ushered in capital from Saint-Gobain Group (France) in 1996, and learnt from the latter cutting-edge glass manufacturing technology and management experience for multinationals. Three years later, Saint-Gobain withdrew from China due to cultural inharmony and its judgment on the Chinese market, and divested itself of its entire shares in Fuyao.
With the deepening of reform and opening up, China officially joined the WTO in 2001. However, Chinese glass makers were subject to anti-dumping investigations in the international arena then. Facing unfair competition, Cho petitioned laws for help, trying to not only seek business fairness for himself, but also ask for a reasonable, legal and just international business environment for Chinese enterprises. With the victory of this case, Cho made his Fuyao the first Chinese group to win over the U.S. Department of Commerce after China’s entry into the WTO, and his name was inscribed on the history of world commerce.
Since then, China’s automobile industry has developed vigorously, and Fuyao has headed to a fast track. Today, Fuyao boasts dozens of production bases that cover the entire industrial chain in 18 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities around China, and set up 10 design centers and 2 R&D centers in China, USA, Germany and Japan. The group has by then broken the technical barriers and garnered momentum for innovation and development.
Catering to the demands of the international market and the national strategy to “Go Global”, Fuyao has constructed production and sales bases in 12 countries including the United States, Russia, Germany, Japan and South Korea, and established offices in five states in the USA since 2010. It has become a multinational deserving its name from that year on. According to statistics, Fuyao is now the world’s largest professional supplier of automotive glass, taking up nearly 34% of the global market. In possession of 58 subsidiaries and about 30,000 employees, it has become the service and product provider for globally-famed automotive brands, such as Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda.
In recent years, Cho led Fuyao Group to actively explore and practice the “new quality productive forces”. Its information technology and production automation ranking top among global peers, the group has been awarded honors and qualifications such as the China Model Enterprise for Intelligent Manufacturing, China Quality Award (CQA), National Innovation Demonstration Enterprise and National Corporate Technology Center, listed several times into the Fortune Top 500 Chinese Enterprises and Top 500 Chinese Private Enterprises, and entitled repeatedly the Best Chinese Corporate Citizen and the CCTV Best Employer.

From 1987 to date, Fuyao has contributed more than RMB 28.9 billion in taxes. Since 2015 when Fuyao was listed on Hong Kong Exchanges in 2015, the group has adopted the “A+H” mode to be listed on two capital platforms in the Chinese Mainland and overseas, and has been selected for consecutive years into the China Top 10 Listed Companies. It has also been rated constituent stock by both the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Heng Sheng Index. Since its listing, Fuyao has cumulatively distributed a dividend of RMB 30.042 billion, 2.73 times the funds it raised from the stock market in the same period, truly offering more interest to its shareholders than it took from them. On the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up in 2018, Cho Tak Wong was inscribed on the list of 100 Excellent Entrepreneurs. He won EY World Entrepreneur of the Year, allegedly the Oscar Award for the global business community, in 2009, and the Phoenix Award, the highest honor selected by global glass industry leaders, in 2016, as the jury commented, “Cho Tak Wong has led his Fuyao Group to change the pattern of the global automotive glass industry.”
While making development for his own enterprise, Cho has actively fulfilled his social responsibility, adhering to the principle of “respecting the law and giving back to society”. While actively making suggestions for enhancing China’s national competitiveness, Cho has also devoted himself to public welfare undertakings. He has donated altogether nearly RMB 20 billion. In 2011, he donated 300 million Fuyao Glass shares held by himself to establish Heren Charitable Foundation, which is the first and only national non-public fundraising foundation approved by the State Council and founded with financial assets and stocks. Heren Charitable Foundation has funded nearly 260 charitable projects so far. In 2021, at the proposal of Cho Tak Wong, Heren Charitable Foundation donated RMB10 billion to initiate the establishment of Fuyao University of Science and Technology, it aims to cultivate individuals with an innovative spirit.
In addition, Cho Tak Wong is also a promoter of the rule of law for charitable causes. Amid the drought torturing the five provinces in Southwest China in 2010, he donated RMB 200 million to roughly 100,000 affected families, and signed the “donation accountability” agreement with the donation distribution agencies to ensure by independent supervision that the donation can be fully and precisely put in place. This initiated a new model for charitable development in China. In the China Charity Law promulgated in 2016, “equity donations” and “liability for compensation” were written into the articles. To honor his noteworthy contribution to poverty alleviation and development, the State Council conferred upon Cho Tak Wong the Award for Contribution under the National Awards for Poverty Alleviation in 2019. He was awarded the title of “National Outstanding Individual in the Fight against COVID-19” in 2021.
When serving as a member of the Twelfth NCCPC, Cho actively provided advice and suggestions for the improvement of the country’s comprehensive competitiveness, covering topics like wetland protection, food security, taxation system, and survival of small and micro enterprises. His proposals were highly praised by the Party and government and widely concerned among the whole society. He gave all he had to help realize a better and faster development of China.
Along the way, Cho has adhered to the traditional Chinese business culture of “righteousness and profit promoting each other”, and made personal exploration of the way to promote the national prosperity and development. As the first Chinese to blueprint the idea of a talent exchange market, he paved the way for fully tapping the manpower resources and facilitating the healthy development of the private economy in the country. Introducing the independent director system to China earlier than anyone else, he has guaranteed the interests of the shareholders and employees at the management level. Being the first winner of an anti-dumping case after China’s entry into the WTO, he set an example for Chinese companies to pursue commercial fairness in the international market. Answering the national calls for enterprise ownership reform and “Going Global”, he has always been an active practitioner of the state-level strategies and policies. He has built Fuyao the pioneer for “Intelligent Manufacturing in China” to go global, and offered a Chinese example for the integration of global economy. Thus, Cho Tak Wong has been known as “China’s top philanthropist” and the representative of Chinese entrepreneurship.

• 2017-12-05 4107
  Dewang Library opened officially