Obituary: Chinese machinery executive, philanthropist Chen Chiang

Chen Chiang, the founder of Chen Hsong Holdings Ltd., one of China's largest injection molding machine makers, died March 13. He was 100.

A statement from the company said Chiang, who founded the plastics manufacturing giant in 1958 in what was, at the time, the British colony of Hong Kong, died in the company of family.

Chiang's personal story mirrored that of modern China. He was born to a poor family in Shandong province and orphaned when he was 10.

He immigrated to Hong Kong with a brother in 1949, when Mao Zedong and the Chinese communists won the country's civil war.

Eventually, he started and built Chen Hsong into a prominent plastics machinery manufacturing firm and in 1986 became one of the first Hong Kong industrialists to open a joint venture factory in mainland China, starting with an injection press plant in neighboring Guangdong province.

But it was what he did next that seemed to attract more attention: In 1990, Chiang donated his holdings in the company to the Chiang Chen Industrial Charity Foundation, which promotes technical education and training.

"Due to humble beginnings, [he] himself firmly adheres to the motto that 'industry enriches people's livelihood, leading to prosperity, which strengthens the country,'" the company said in a statement.

Chen Hsong said the foundation has given more than HK$400 million (US$51.1 million) to training programs, scholarships and technical research in its 30-year-plus history.

The foundation "is now one of the largest charity organizations based in Hong Kong dedicated to the education and development of Chinese industrial manufacturing," the company said.

In a 2001 interview with the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong, Chiang said it was a "dream" to become a philanthropist.

"I always wanted to be a kung fu hero who, in classical Chinese literature, was willing to give up his life and wealth to help his country and people," he said.

"I did not have any money and the ability to help China when I was a young boy because my family was very poor," Chiang said. "But I had the money when I was 68, and so I did what I always wanted to do."

Chiang was awarded Hong Kong's highest honor, the Grand Bauhinia Medal, in 2005, as well as the Order of the British Empire from the Queen of England. He received honorary doctorates from several universities in Hong Kong, and the head of Hong Kong's government issued a statement on his passing.

A Hong Kong news report said Chiang first developed his engineering knowledge during five years in Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang army, which fought the Japanese before eventually losing the Chinese civil war to Mao and the Communist Party.

The company said Chiang had a "lifetime obsession with industrial machinery and manufacturing technology" that led him to start Chen Hsong with a partner in 1958, with HK$200 (US$25) in savings.

In 1966, he designed the first 10-ounce, in-line plastic injection press in Hong Kong, a development the company said earned him the moniker of the "King of Plastic Injection Moulding Machines."

He guided the firm through rapid development, taking it public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1991.

For a time, it was the largest plastics molding machinery maker in mainland China.

In a 1997 interview with Plastics News on the floor of the NPE show in Chicago, Chiang said the company made about 9,000 injection presses a year and had 30 percent of the Chinese market.

It had also established joint ventures in China with European machinery makers Battenfeld GmbH and Krupp Kautex Maschinenbau GmbH.

In the NPE interview, which took place a few weeks before the July 1, 1997, handover of Hong Kong from British rule to the Chinese government in Beijing, Chiang talked about the role Hong Kong companies could play opening China's market.

Today, Chen Hsong is smaller than some mainland Chinese-based plastics machinery rivals, including Haitian International Holdings Ltd., but still one of the largest injection machinery makers in the country.

The company is led by one of Chiang's daughters, Lai-yuen Chiang, who is the CEO and chairwoman. Other daughters have had prominent roles in Hong Kong society, with one serving in the territory's legislature, another heading the chamber of commerce and a fourth having a career as a famed singer in the 1980s.

Local media said he is survived by his wife, six daughters, a son and grandchildren.