Brand Magazine Interviews Our Chairman, Yuan Junjie

Yuan Junjie: The Wise Read Their Times

By Fu Liujing

In the Annals of Yanzi, the statesman Yan Ying observed: "Those who understand the times are the wise; those who master change are the heroes."

Perhaps it was meant to be. Visiting Mr. Yuan Junjie, Chairman of Ningbo Hongda Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., and listening to the ideas behind his words and the steps that have shaped his company's growth, it was hard not to notice how closely he fits that description: the capable person who reads the currents of the age and acts on them.

Reading the Times and Acting on Them

In the early 1990s, China began its transition from a planned socialist economy to a socialist market economy, and hundreds of millions of Chinese set out on a path of new thinking, hard exploration, bold practice and innovation.

"Follow where national policy is heading." In 1992, with that conviction, Mr. Yuan Shigen, Yuan Junjie's father, raised 50,000 yuan to start a chemical trading firm. He named it Hongda, meaning a great tide, in the hope that the business would carve out a bright future in the surging current of economic growth.

"Back then there was no money, no car, not even an office. My father pushed a tricycle around all day. It was extremely hard. There were plenty of setbacks and failures, but he never gave up. His conviction kept Hongda going, and he believed the day would come when it succeeded." In 1997, Ningbo Hongda Chemical Trading Firm was renamed Jiangdong Hongda Chemical Co., Ltd. In 2000, Yuan Junjie formally took the baton from his father.

"Did you truly want to take it on? Did you feel the pressure?" I asked him.

Yuan Junjie laughed and answered without hesitation: "Of course I wanted to. My father got Hongda started. I want my own efforts to carry the Hongda brand forward. My hope is that Hongda becomes a brand that lasts a hundred years."

Valuing Time, Creating Value

If Mr. Yuan Shigen laid the foundation for Hongda, Mr. Yuan Junjie put it on the fast track. In its 24 years, Hongda has grown from a trading firm to a company and then to a group, and each stage has been a milestone.

Asked how he pictures his father, Yuan Junjie reaches for a few words: hardworking, tireless, full of drive. If his father was his role model back then, today Yuan Junjie is his daughter's.

"In my eyes, no one can top my father." That proud declaration from his daughter is the warmest comfort a father can receive, and it makes the exhaustion melt away in an instant.

Mr. Yuan told us that his father's example shaped him deeply. He believes in opportunity, but he believes even more firmly that opportunity favors those who are prepared.

"Life is finite. We are all functions of time. Your life is the sum of the valuable things you do minute by minute, and when you add them all up at the end, that is what your life was worth." It is a line he repeats often. He tells his employees: when you find yourself doubting tomorrow, look at what you did today and ask yourself whether you gave it your effort and your full attention.

His employees describe him as a pragmatic and self-disciplined businessman who never uses his position to claim special treatment. When he is not traveling, he is almost always the first one in the office, and he takes on the hardest and least appealing work himself.

"Mr. Yuan works incredibly hard. I'll be at home about to turn in for the night, and his icon on the company's online management platform is still lit up, so I know he's still working. For him there is no such thing as an eight-hour day," an employee added during a break in the interview.

Yuan Junjie smiled. "The business is part of my life. It has merged with my life completely. There's no separating them." I asked whether his wife and daughter ever complained about that level of commitment. His face lit up: "My wife is a wonderful partner and fully supports my work. As for my daughter, she may have complained once, but now she's one of my biggest fans. She says nobody can top her dad, and I take that as her way of understanding, accepting and supporting how hard I work."

Thinking Ahead, with Innovation at the Core

Compared with his father's generation, which put its head down and worked through upheavals such as the Cultural Revolution, Yuan Junjie considers himself better at working smart, and better at putting people first, winning customers over and earning their trust through genuine care and generosity. At the 10th Guangzhou coating exhibition in 2010, while other booths were packed with products on display, Hongda's booth had tables, chairs and red wine. Passing customers were happy to sit down, share a glass and talk, and business was done almost without anyone noticing. "This is no longer an era of simply promoting products," he adds. "You have to put people first. That's what the times call for."

Not long ago, Yuan Junjie was received by Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly. Speaking of that moment, he traces it directly back to his people-first approach. He and Sadiq have known each other for 20 years and moved from a customer relationship to a friendship long ago. Those two decades were never about transactions alone; they were about building something personal. The same goes for the long-serving employees who have given the company 20 years. There is no need to wonder whether they still have the enthusiasm and drive, because the simple fact that they are still here is one of the company's most valuable assets.

Today, Hongda has grown into an integrated technology, manufacturing and trading enterprise specializing in pharmaceuticals, dyes, pigments, dye intermediates and textile printing and dyeing auxiliaries. Rooted in the domestic market and actively expanding abroad, the company has built strong working relationships with leading firms in the United Kingdom, India, Germany, Turkey, Hong Kong and elsewhere, and enjoys a solid reputation at home and internationally.

I asked Yuan Junjie what Hongda's foundation really is, and how the company managed to grow against the tide of the global financial crisis.

"Innovation is the soul of any company," he replied. A natural observer and analyst, he believes a company in a different era should set different strategic goals.

He also has his own reading of China's economic environment. In the decade or so after reform and opening up, China went through a phase of rapid capital accumulation, which was not a normal state of economic development. China's economy only shows its true state when it grows without external stimulus. So through all the swings in the outside environment over the years, Yuan Junjie has stayed true to his original intent, focused on his own field and done only what he believed needed doing.

When he took charge of Hongda in 2000, Yuan Junjie brought in advanced management thinking and leading trade models. A macro approach in which domestic trade supports foreign trade and foreign trade drives domestic trade, combined with an innovative group management structure, produced substantial growth. After two decades of careful work, Hongda's market footprint has become increasingly stable. On the current difficulty of breaking into South America, he says with justified pride: "We opened up the South American market more than ten years ago."

Many import and export companies pursue only one direction. Hongda advances on both fronts at once, and that far-sighted strategy is, I suspect, the key to how it kept growing through the 2008 crisis.

Yuan Junjie says a foreign trade company that still operates on buying and selling alone will easily be left behind. Hongda has braided technology, manufacturing and trade into a single strong rope, building a trading platform on the back of serious, sustained investment in talent and in the overall quality of its teams. In an age defined by access to resources, he believes that building a platform will give the company powerful momentum for the future.

Everything that exists is carried forward by its era. Great figures and the wealthiest people alike are, in Yuan Junjie's view, products of a particular moment in time. As he modestly puts it: "If I weren't here, somewhere in China or somewhere in the world there would be someone doing exactly what I do." Perhaps that is simply the responsibility this era has handed his generation.