Page 140 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

world like finding a cure for cancer, but Lingtu is slightly ahead of the big
brands Coke, McDonald’s, DHL, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com, which have
discovered the power of mobile media only in the last few years. The fact that
Lingtu was born in the late 1990s
and that his company grew out of
the young Chinese technician’s
“I have nothing, only a dream. I forget to school project is remarkable.
sleep, to eat. My dream is my energy.” Unlike many of the clone start-
ups described in this book that
Liu Yingkui,
founder and chairman, Oriental Wisdom replicated U.S. businesses, Liu is
breaking new ground. His inno-
vative business specializes in the
booming financial sector in China.
For example, its e-magazine, which is designed to be read on a mobile phone,
blends financial news blips and quotes from Bloomberg, Morningstar, and
Beijing’s Shihua Financial Information with ads for Chinese banks, insurance
companies, and mutual funds. Liu also wants to distribute financial services
to consumers by mobile phone and earn a commission on sales and even help
insurers handle claims by cell phone.
“There’s no technical barrier now that everyone and his mother is
familiar with how SMS [short message service]-based, value-added services
work,” says Kaiser Kuo, who is group director of digital strategy for the ad
agency Ogilvy China in Beijing.
Liu’s heroes are not Jobs, Wozniak, and Gates but Liu Bang, who was the
first emperor of the Chinese Han dynasty and ruled China from 202 to 195
BC. Abraham Lincoln is another role model. Oriental Wisdom has an entre-
preneurial sage as its leader—an individual who is advancing culture by cher-
ishing, respecting, and learning from the past. He is using the advantage of
China’s millennia of “oriental wisdom” from spiritual and moral leaders
ranging from Confucius to Lao Tse to promote his twenty-first-century tech-
nology.
Liu tells me that he’s pouring his heart into his business not to get rich or
famous but out of national pride. With his soulful brown eyes and wrestler’s
build, Liu has a natural charm that shines through. What Liu is determined
to prove with Oriental Wisdom is that China can make a great leap forward
in this new era of digitalization.

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