Dr Chau Chak Wing with renowned architect Frank Gehry

WHO is Dr Chau Chak Wing  ???

Australian – Chinese business leader Dr Chau Chak Wing’s Australian investments are small and inconspicuous, but he’s quickly gaining a higher-profile. Dr Chau Chak wing has deep pockets and deeper political connections.

Dr Chau Chak Wing recently donated $AUD 20 million to the University of Technology Sydney to support the new Faculty of Business building designed by Frank Gehry. He also generously donated a further $5 million to create an endowment fund for student scholarships. These donations not only contributes to the university’s ambition to build a world-class campus, it also makes possible exchange opportunities that otherwise would not exist for some students. ( see later in the story below).

The gift makes Dr Chau one of the leading philanthropists in the Asia-Pacific region and is a reflection of his leadership in business, education and Australia-China relations.  In recognition of these gifts ( the largest gift ever made to an Australian Business school ) the UTS Council agreed to name the new Gehry-designed Faculty of Business building the “Dr Chau Chak Wing Building”.

Dr Chau was the subject of a sustained investigation last year by The Sydney Morning Herald, which keeps a correspondent in China. The investigation was kicked off by a UTS journalism student, Nic Christensen, who had been scrutinising donations to Australia’s major political parties. Christensen’s story won him the Walkley Foundation’s Media Super Student Journalist of the Year Award in 2009. He is now employed as a journalist in Sydney.

nic christensen

See below how the media picked up Nic’s story:  ( produced in full – below )

• “Chinese billionaire funding our MPs”,    Sydney Morning Herald, July 4 2009
• “Behind the mysterious Dr Chau”,    Sydney Morning Herald, July 4 2009
• “Chinese money trail unravels”,    Sydney Morning Herald, July 4 2009
• “Man of property donates millions”,    The Age, July 4 2009
• “Cool, calm and connected”,    The Age, July 4 2009

The story shows that Dr Chau made a lot of money early on in his career due to his close relationships with senior Communist Party officials in China’s southern Guangdong Province. But details are scant and Dr Chau himself turns out to be tight-lipped about his business history. Daughter Winky Chow operates one of Dr Chau’s Australian investments, the Australian New Express Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper. Chow has also been close to the erstwhile NSW premier, Morris Iemma. In this, she has emulated her father’s method of chasing profits through close ties to political leaders.

The press conference for one of the most significant projects in the history of the University of Technology, Sydney, was under way. The pre-eminent architect Frank Gehry and the university’s chancellor, Vicki Sara, and vice-chancellor, Ross Milbourne, sat before the media gathering to announce a landmark building for the emerald city. The media was crowding around the elder statesman of world architecture, waiting for some wisdom to be imparted on this June, 2010  afternoon.

One person, however, was missing: the enigmatic Chau Chak Wing, in fact, Chau and his entourage were surreptitiously ushered past the media throng during the press conference in the refurbished former Fairfax building off Broadway. Chau was there in an adjoining room, signing a final agreement to hand over almost $25 million to the university over 10 years for the new building and a scholarship program.

It was the biggest philanthropic gift in history by an individual for a university building in Australia – None of the media assembled were the wiser – why  ???   ( read on ….!! ) .

According to Forbes Magazine’s “2007 Chinese rich list” Dr Chau Chak Wing ranks = # 106 / $745 million / age 53

Originally, the university had wanted the announcement to be a double header.

However Chau refused to front the press conference. He is known to be acutely media shy, but also strongly aware of cultivating a public image of power, charity and good taste. He has quietly built relationships with some of the biggest names in politics and business in Australia, and this latest announcement added to his reach.

In 2009 the Australian-Chinese property billionaire emerged as the largest overseas benefactor of Australia’s political parties. Chau has poured more than $2 million into the coffers of the Liberal, National and Labor parties in the past decade. In the two financial years that had the heaviest impact on the last federal election, 2006-07 and 2007-08, he gave $980,000 to the Coalition and $402,000 to Labor.

Besides the strong links Chau forged with the former prime minister John Howard and other senior Coalition ministers, he seems to have been adept at singling out future stars of the Labor government. In 2004 and 2005 he partially funded trips to China for the future prime minister, Kevin Rudd, the future treasurer, Wayne Swan, the future foreign affairs minister, Stephen Smith, and the future agriculture minister, Tony Burke.

mark vaile (deputy prime minister ) and dr chau

He also paid for a trip to China in 2005 by Mark Arbib, the then NSW Labor secretary and now parliamentary factional leader in Canberra.

In Sydney, Chau was well known to the former NSW premier Bob Carr and his successor, Morris Iemma. Chau’s daughter, Winky, worked for both as a community relations adviser. She joined Carr’s office in 2004, the same year her father opened a Chinese language daily newspaper in Sydney, the Australian New Express Daily.

dr chau with kevin rudd

Interestingly, Chau accompanied Xi Jinping – the Chinese Vice-President and likely next president – on his trip to Canberra in late June. He received the photograph, almost compulsory in China, with Rudd and Xi. The Chinese language version of his website shows that not only did Chau meet Rudd on that Canberra trip but also Julia Gillard, Swan and Smith.

UTS vice chancellor – Prof Milbourne said the key to Chau’s involvement with the Gehry building was the businessman’s son, Eric, who is studying architecture at the university. The university has enjoyed a growing friendship with Chau for almost four years, but the wooing of Gehry provided the perfect confluence of circumstances. ”I knew Eric would be interested in Gehry,” Milbourne says.

”The development manager spoke to Eric about our plans. Dr Chau liked me and the vision for the UTS, so we had a strong foundation for a relationship. We invited Eric to meet with Gehry and his team in LA in April. ”

Milbourne says he broached the subject that Chau become involved by making a leadership gift, the term for major philanthropic donations, particularly popular in the US. He suggested $25 million. Chau demurred. He would give $20 million for the building and $5 million for a scholarship program. Milbourne says the money is payable in $2.5 million tranches over 10 years. ”It was a good meeting,” Milbourne says.

The day after the Gehry announcement Chau and university representatives had a celebratory lunch at Flying Fish restaurant at Pyrmont. It was a private lunch, just the way Chau liked it.

John Garnaut is China correspondent

Deborah Snow is a Fairfax reporter 

Nic Christensen is a journalism master’s student.

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Sydney Morning Herald

Chinese billionaire funding our MPs

Deborah Snow, Nic Christensen and John Garnaut

July 4, 2009

Cr Chau with Kevin Rudd in March 2008. Photo: Australian News Express Daily

A little-known Australian-Chinese property billionaire has emerged as the largest offshore benefactor of Australia’s political parties. Chau Chak Wing has poured more than $2 million into the coffers of the Liberal, National and Labor parties in the past decade.

In the two financial years that had the heaviest impact on the last federal election – 2006-07 and 2007-08 – he gave $980,000 to the Coalition and $402,000 to Labor.

Yet despite the generous gifts to both sides he has stayed well below the radar in debates about Australia’s burgeoning links with China, and is barely known outside the political and business elites in both countries.

He eclipses the Macau entrepreneur Stanley Ho as a donor because Labor returned most of Mr Ho’s money after the 2007 election.

Dr Chau told the Herald he was just a “small businessman” who was fulfilling the role of a “good and responsible citizen”. “When I make those donations, I do not put any conditions on the contribution.”

john howard with dr chau

The former prime minister John Howard told the Herald: “I had a very positive view of his contribution to the relationship [with China].

“He always struck me as a person interested in a genuine way in building relations between China and Australia. I never discussed donations with him … the access he had was not so frequent as to even justify that question.”

from the Kingold website

Dr Chau is a Chinese-born Australian citizen but has channelled most of his donations through his overseas companies – the Kingold Group in China, the HK Kingson Investment in Hong Kong and another Hong Kong entity, Chun Yip Trading.

Federally, Labor has vowed to ban foreign donations, but legislation to achieve this has stalled in the Senate.

Dr Chau educated his children in Australia and operates from a base in the booming city of Guangzhou, capital of his native Guangdong province.

Political and business leaders say he has been instrumental in facilitating Australian trade and investment deals with China worth billions of dollars.

As well as the strong links Dr Chau forged with Mr Howard and senior Coalition ministers, he seems to have been adept at singling out future stars of the Labor Government.

In 2004 and 2005 he partially funded trips to China for the future prime minister, Kevin Rudd, the future treasurer, Wayne Swan, the future foreign affairs minister, Stephen Smith, and the future agriculture minister, Tony Burke.

He also paid for a trip to China in 2005 by Mark Arbib, then the NSW Labor secretary and recently appointed by Mr Rudd as Minister for Employment Participation.

In Sydney Dr Chau was well known to the former premier Bob Carr and his successor, Morris Iemma. Dr Chau’s daughter, Winky, worked for both premiers as a community relations adviser. She joined Mr Carr’s office in 2004, the same year her father opened a Chinese-language newspaper in Sydney, the Australian New Express Daily.

Ms Chau has since gone into business with Mr Iemma, offering consultancy services for companies seeking business in China.

Mr Carr told the Herald that she had “performed excellently”. He said Dr Chau was “an asset to Australia”. “The fact that you have someone with good connections in China … I think there would be something wrong with us if we didn’t take up an opportunity like that.”

In 2007 Mr Iemma appointed Dr Chau an honorary NSW ambassador to Guangzhou

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Sydney Morning Herald

Behind the mysterious Dr Chau

Nic Christensen

July 4, 2009

A well-connected man . . . Dr Chau Chak Wing with the former prime minister, John Howard. Dr Chau is welcomed by both sides of politics.

He’s been an intimate of our political and corporate leadership for years. Now the public gets a look at Australia’s biggest overseas-based political donor. John Garnaut, Deborah Snow and Nic Christensen report.

Businessmen of Chaozhou, a former fishing town tucked into a corner of southern China’s Guangdong province, are famous for their tight friendship networks, their generosity and their di diao – their ability to fly under the radar.

Isolated from the rest of China by geography and a distinct language, they have set out to build formidable trade and investment networks throughout and beyond South-East Asia. Some Chaozhou men – such as the world’s richest ethnic Chinese person, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing (worth $US16 billion [$20 billion]), and the richest mainlander, Huang Guangyu ($US6 billion until he stumbled last year) – have grown too big to avoid the public glare.

Chau Chak Wing – or Zhou Zerong, as he is known in the dialect of north China – is worth a mere billion Australian dollars, according to Forbes magazine. He has preserved his di diao to the point that the Australian public was unaware he was an Australian citizen and the country’s largest overseas-based political donor, lavishing more than $2 million on our major political parties.

Chau’s wife and two of his three children live in Sydney. But he is based in Guangzhou, the bustling capital of Guangdong, where he has become a key go-to man for Australian politicians, officials and business people pushing into southern China.

Australian heads of state, premiers, ambassadors and corporate chieftains have publicly – and privately – thanked him for his generosity in opening the gates to Guangdong province, an economic powerhouse of China.

“Thanks again for looking after me for a full day when I was in Guangzhou last November and introducing me to the Governor of Guangdong and generally giving advice as to how to promote our cause”, wrote Charles Goode, the then chairman of Woodside Petroleum, in an August 2002 letter. Goode’s effusiveness was justified: his consortium had just signed a contract to ship $25 billion of liquefied natural gas from Western Australia to Guangdong.

Chau’s Australian Chinese language newspaper and his Kingold company website testify to his willingness to help. They dutifully reported that in the space of two days during a September 2007 Sydney visit, Chau met the then foreign minister, Alexander Downer, defence minister, Brendan Nelson, and deputy PM, Mark Vaile. The website noted that that these “three senior officials of Australia are all appreciative of Dr Chau’s contribution …”

Doors open just as readily for Chau on the other side of Australian politics. In March last year the Kingold website reported how he travelled to Canberra to congratulate Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on their election victory, while also meeting the Treasurer Wayne Swan, foreign minister Stephen Smith, agriculture minister Tony Burke and Labor’s then national secretary, Tim Gartrell. Rudd, Swan, Burke and Smith have all been beneficiaries of Chau’s hospitality.

Until approached by the Herald, Chau had never invited a journalist to peer inside his empire. This time, he did so with trademark style.

Declining Chau’s offer of air fares and accommodation, the Herald found itself ushered on arrival through a VIP tunnel under Guangzhou airport, and into a black Bentley. We headed north on an empty new freeway to Chonghua, the pristine heart of the city’s drinking water catchment, where leaders including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai occasionally took holidays. It’s where Chau has launched his latest and most ambitious property venture.

Diggers are contouring – to the specifications of the world’s top designers – the land for a 27-hole golf course, a six-star hotel and VIP villas so exclusive that no resident will be seen from any other villa or public space – a luxury almost unheard of in crowded China.

The fairways will be organically fertilised and all vehicles will be electric-powered and travel underground. Golf buggies will be guided remotely by a GPS system, popping out of tunnels to assist weary golfers at the press of a button.

As with many Chinese property developments, this one began at the banquet table. Chau had spotted an official down on his luck – one who had the all-important fund-raising task of selling land but had not found a buyer.

“He had to demonstrate outstanding achievements to his superior,” Chau says. “So I said, I will have this land, as much as you can give me, from the top of the mountain as far as I can see.”

That land has appreciated four- or five-fold in three years, Chau says. Equally importantly, “the mayor was delighted”. Chau sees the resort as a gift to the “successful and articulate” to recharge and “stimulate their thoughts”. As for the displaced, Chau says, “I can’t take responsibility for relocating and settling the peasants – the Government had to handle that”.

Chau bought into Guangzhou’s New Express Daily eight years ago in a joint venture with the provincial government’s Yangcheng Evening News. Private citizens, let alone Australian passport holders, aren’t meant to be involved in running Chinese newspapers – the domain of the Communist Party’s propaganda departments. Few people are aware of Chau’s involvement.

A senior journalist at a related newspaper says Chau provided the money while Yangcheng retained political responsibility and provided the staff. The editor, Zhang Hongchao, told us ownership and control were “too complicated” to explain.

Chau, however, insists: “I took over and invested in it. Now the management and operation are under my direction.”

Guangzhou newspapers are a battleground between compelling journalism, which attracts readers and advertisers, and “propaganda discipline”, which is necessary to avoid being shut down. Chau is not one for taking political risks.

“The Government has found this newspaper very commendable, because we never have had any negative reporting,” Chau says. “It doesn’t deal much about politics.”

If Chau’s golf resort and newspaper are about cultivating connections, property development is the cash cow. Nearly 200,000 Guangzhou residents live in his apartments. The heart of Chau’s empire is Favourview Palace – a downtown Guangzhou sprawling mini-city of apartments, villas, clubs and schools.

At its centre is an artificial hill topped with vast lawns, groves of exotic fruit, a tennis court, a vegetable patch and a great mansion with a large minaret made from Australian sandstone. Chau’s staff refer to it as the Castle. Chau invites us inside its huge double doors.

He speaks little English and carries himself with a quietly powerful energy. He is not interested in talking about his background or how he earned his di yi tong jin – the first bucket of gold. He glides quickly over the 1980s and early 1990s, when he moved from Chaozhou to Hong Kong and then Australia – or was it the other way around? – and finally Guangzhou.

His Australian citizenship was no problem: “After I made my investments, the Immigration Department was happy to send me a form to apply”.

His honorary doctorate is from Keuka College, New York, for community services. He donated 3 million yuan ($550,000) two months ago to a Public Security Bureau training centre for Chinese police. “We want society to be well managed,” he says. But he insists a Hong Kong newspaper report about him having major real estate deals with the bureau was wrong.

After a time, he relaxes, and talks about the life principles underpinning his success.

“I am a small businessman and I honour my reputation. I focus on friendship and integrity. People who make friends with me feel secure with my friendship. If I have a friend, I will never impose or create problems. I never ask them for any request. I don’t mix friendship with business.”

And then, making a point later repeated: “In the future we have a lot of opportunity to discuss together, now I have made friends with you.”

Chau does not deny he is a friend to nearly everyone of high power in Guangdong; a consequence, he says, of chairing several business groups. An acquaintance says Chau’s star began to rise when Xie Fei, a Chaozhou neighbour, rose to the Guangdong Communist Party secretaryship in 1991. Xie stayed there for eight years.

Another source says Chau’s fortunes rose again when Lin Shusen from Shantou, next to Chaozhou, was appointed the deputy party secretary of Guangzhou municipality in 1997 and party secretary in 2002.

They note that Chau has had uncharacteristic difficulties acquiring a huge land parcel since his friend Lin was transferred to run the neighbouring Guizhou province in 2006.

But Chau is confident he can navigate Guangdong’s rapidly shifting power. “It’s not just one [provincial] governor that I know, but several,” he says.

Business and politics in China are locked together in an astonishingly complex web of loyalty, friendship, favours and obligation. Chau is evidently a master of that system – a system that does not always translate smoothly across political and cultural borders.

Chau has expected our questions on his donations to Australian politics, and is ready. After all, a Greens MP, Lee Rhiannon, hit a raw nerve this year when she complained about foreign donations and “wealthy Chinese bankrolling a string of politicians and exerting their influence”.

“I am very happy as a citizen to play my role of participant in the democratic process,” Chau says.

He says he’s hands-off regarding donations, which are left to his managers’ recommendations, and that he asks nothing in return.

Alexander Downer, whose re-election committee got $30,000 from Chau in 2007, says: “He never asked for anything. I just got the feeling he was interested in knowing me because of the position I held. Perhaps that’s being too modest; perhaps he just found me incredibly interesting and rather amusing.”

A Labor insider suggests it might also be about “what gets translated back home. When Chau meets with someone like Tim Gartrell, it’s that they’re seen to have met with the national secretary, because the national secretary in China is the top dog”.

Chau’s access in Australia extends beyond Canberra. He was well-known to the former NSW Labor premiers Bob Carr and Morris Iemma, embodying for them the sister-state relationship which NSW cultivated for 30 years with Guangdong.

In 2004 Carr’s office hired Chau’s daughter Winky as an adviser, while later that year the Premier launched Chau’s Sydney Chinese language newspaper, the Australian New Express Daily .

Winky later worked for Iemma and the two friends have since established a business consultancy together, though Iemma says Winky’s father has no hand in the enterprise.

Iemma says the sister-state relationship was important enough for it to be the subject of one of the top 12 briefing folders he was given on taking over the premiership.

Chau’s Australian assets are surprisingly small: two commercial properties and the newspaper. A joint venture with the University of Western Sydney providing degree content for students at his Kingold Private University in Guangzhou has run its course.

He says attempts to persuade the NSW Government to allow him to build a Dubai-style luxury six- or seven-star hotel in Sydney have gone nowhere. Although Australia is less work-efficient than China, he says, he wants to “gradually” increase investment here.

Why did this self-made man grant an interview now, having knocked back nearly every request for years? With the Herald probing his political donations, perhaps he thought it time to introduce himself to a broader Australian audience.

Then again, it may have been Chinese zodiac compatibility. “I did my due diligence and discovered that you are a tiger, and I am a horse,” he told his interviewer

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Sydney Morning Herald

Chinese money trail unravels

Nic Christensen and Deborah Snow

July 4, 2009

Stanley Ho would have been Australia’s biggest overseas political donor had Labor not returned most of his money.

Along with his wife, Angela Leong, and associated companies and individuals, Ho gave Labor $1.6 million in the two months before the federal election of 2007.

An embarrassed ALP head office promptly returned its share and NSW Labor eventually returned most of what it got from the Macau casino entrepreneur, manoeuvres that left Labor with $300,000 of his money. Why some was good enough to keep was never fully explained.

“Virtually no one in the Western world allows this stuff,” an ALP insider said.

Many of the donations from Chau Chak Wing, totalling $2 million, came from his companies overseas: Kingold, HK Kingson Investment and a relative’s company, Chun Yip Trading. It took the Herald two weeks to establish Chun Yip Trading, which gave the Coalition $400,000, was related to Chau. Confirmation came from the man himself.

The NSW Liberals refused to shed light on Chun Yip’s pedigree.

Through a spokesman, Chau told the Herald that he “ran a large organisation” and “there was no specific reason for using Chun Yip; it was purely a reflection of internal financial structures”.

He said Australian representatives suggested donations and he did not “personally handle day-to-day administrative matters”. The spokesman said another donor to the NSW Liberals – Tech Dragon Holdings of Hong Kong – was owned by the same relative of Chau.

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The Age

Man of property donates millions

Deborah Snow, Nic Christensen and John Garnaut

July 4, 2009

A little known  Australian-Chinese property billionaire has emerged as the largest overseas-based benefactor of Australia’s political parties.

Chau Chak Wing has poured more than $2 million into the coffers of the Liberal, National and Labor parties over the past decade, making him a key sponsor of the Australian political process.

In just two financial years, 2006-07 and 2007-08, he gave $980,000 to the Coalition, and $402,000 to Labor. This was the period which had the most impact on the last federal election.

Despite generous gifts to both sides, he has stayed well below the radar in debates over Australia’s burgeoning links with China, and is barely known outside the political and business elites in both countries.

He eclipses Macau entrepreneur Stanley Ho as a donor because Labor returned most of Mr Ho’s money after the 2007 election.

Speaking in his first detailed interview, Dr Chau said he was just a “small businessman” who was fulfilling the role of a “good and responsible citizen”.

“When I make those donations, I do not put any conditions on the contribution,” he said.

Former prime minister John Howard said: “I had a very positive view of his contribution to the relationship (with China). He always struck me as a person interested in a genuine way in building relations between China and Australia.”

“I never discussed donations with him and … the access he had was not so frequent as to even justify that question.”

Dr Chau is a Chinese-born Australian citizen, but has channelled most of his donations to the parties here through his overseas companies, the China-based Kingold group, the Hong-Kong-based HK Kingson Investment company and another Hong Kong entity, Chun Yip Trading.

Federally, Labor has vowed to ban foreign donations but legislation to achieve this has stalled in the Senate.

Dr Chau educated his children in Australia and now operates from the booming city of Guangzhou, capital of his native Guangdong province.

Political and business leaders say he has been instrumental in assisting Australian trade and investment deals with China, including a 2002 liquefied natural gas export deal worth $25 billion.

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Cool, calm and connected

John Garnaut, Deborah Snow and Nic Christensen

July 4, 2009

The businessmen of Chaozhou, a former fishing town tucked into a corner of Guangdong province in southern China, are famous for their tight friendship networks, their generosity and their “di diao”: their low profile, or ability to fly under the radar.

Isolated from the rest of China by geography and a distinct language, they have set out to build formidable trade and investment networks through South-East Asia and beyond.

Some Chaozhou men, like the richest ethnic Chinese person, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing (worth $US16 billion, or $A20.1 billion), and the richest mainlander, Huang Guangyu (worth $US6 billion until he stumbled last year), have grown too big to avoid the public glare.

Chau Chak Wing, or Zhou Zerong as he is known in the dialect of north China, is worth a mere billion Australian dollars (according to Forbes magazine) and has preserved his identity to such an extent that people were previously unaware he was an Australian citizen, or that he was Australia’s largest overseas-based political donor, lavishing more than $2 million thus far on our major political parties.

Chau’s wife and two of his three children live in Sydney. But he is based in Guangzhou, the bustling capital of Guangdong, where he is now a key go-to man for Australian politicians, officials and business people pushing into southern China.

Australian heads of state, premiers, ambassadors and corporate chieftains have publicly — and privately — thanked him for his seemingly unlimited generosity in opening the gates to Guangdong province, an economic powerhouse of China.

“Thanks again for looking after me for a full day when I was in Guangzhou last November and introducing me to the Governor of Guangdong and generally giving advice as to how to promote our cause,” wrote Charles Goode, then chairman of Woodside Petroleum, in a letter dated August 2002.

Goode had good reason to be effusive: his consortium had just signed a contract to ship $25 billion of liquefied natural gas from Western Australia to Guangdong.

Chau’s Australian Chinese language newspaper and his Kingold company website also testify to his willingness to help. They dutifully reported that in the space of two days during a September 2007 Sydney visit Chau met then foreign minister Alexander Downer, then defence minister Brendan Nelson and then deputy prime minister Mark Vaile. The website noted that these “three senior officials (sic) of Australia are all appreciative of Dr Chau’s contribution … ”

Doors open just as readily for Chau on the other side of Australian politics. In March last year the Kingold website again reported thar he travelled to Canberra to congratulate Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on their election victory, while squeezing in side meetings with Treasurer Wayne Swan, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke and then Labor national secretary Tim Gartrell.

Rudd, Swan, Burke and Smith have all been beneficiaries of Chau’s hospitality.

Until approached by The Age, Chau had never before invited a journalist to peer inside his empire. But now he has done so — and with trademark style.

Having politely declined his offer of airfares and accommodation, The Age found itself ushered on arrival through a VIP tunnel under Guangzhou airport, and into a black Bentley.

We headed north up an empty new freeway to Chonghua, the pristine heart of the city’s drinking-water catchment, where leaders including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai sometimes took holidays. It is here that Chau has launched his latest and most ambitious property venture.

Diggers are now contouring the land for a 27-hole golf course, a six-star hotel and villas that will be so exclusive no resident can be seen from any other villa or public space — a luxury in crowded China.

The golf course will be contoured by top-flight designers. The lawn will be organically fertilised and all vehicles will be electric-powered and travel underground. Golf buggies will be guided remotely by GPS, popping out of tunnels to assist weary golfers at the press of a button.

Like many Chinese property developments, this one began at the banquet table. Chau had spotted an official down on his luck; one who had the all-important fund-raising task of selling land but had not found a buyer.

“He had to demonstrate outstanding achievements to his superior,” says Chau. “So I said, ‘I will have this land, as much as you can give me, from the top of the mountain as far as I can see’.”

That land’s value has appreciated four or fivefold in three years, says Chau. Equally importantly, “the mayor was delighted”.

He sees the resort as a gift to the “successful and articulate” so they may recharge and “stimulate their thoughts”. As for those who were displaced: “The only thing I said was I can’t take responsibility for relocating and settling the peasants, the Government had to handle that.”

After a long lunch, The Age is offered a tour of his Guangzhou newspaper — the News Express Daily — which he bought into eight years ago as a joint venture with the provincial government’s Yangcheng Evening News.

Private citizens, let alone Australian passport holders, are not meant to be involved in running newspapers in China. That is the domain of the Communist Party’s propaganda departments. Few people, even in Guangzhou, are aware of Chau’s involvement.

A senior journalist at a related newspaper said Chau provided all the money while Yangcheng retained political responsibility and provided all the staff, including the editor.

The editor, Zhang Hongchao, told us that ownership and control was “too complicated” to explain.

Chau, however, insists the reality is simple: “I took over and invested in it. Now the management and operation are under my direction.”

Guangzhou newspapers are a battleground between compelling journalism, which attracts readers and advertisers, and “propaganda discipline”, which is necessary to avoid being shut down. Chau is not one for taking political risks.

“The Government has found this newspaper very commendable, because we never have had any negative reporting,” he says. “It doesn’t deal much about

politics, mainly about people’s lives.”

If Chau’s golf resort and newspaper are about projecting a certain image and cultivating connections, then property development is where he cashes in. Nearly 200,000 Guangzhou residents live in his apartments.

The heart of Chau’s empire, in downtown Guangzhou, is a sprawling mini-city of apartments, villas, clubs and schools called Favourview Palace. At its centre is an artificial hill topped with vast, manicured lawns, groves of exotic fruit, a tennis court, a vegetable patch and a great mansion with a large minaret made from Australian sandstone. Chau’s staff refer to it as “the Castle”. He invites us inside through its huge double-doors.

Chau speaks little English but carries himself with a quietly powerful energy.

He isn’t interested in talking about his background or how he earned his “di yi tong jin” — the first bucket of gold.

He glides quickly over the 1980s and early 1990s, when he moved from Chaozhou to Hong Kong and then Australia — or was it the other way around? — and finally Guangzhou. He says Australian citizenship was no problem: “After I made my investments the Immigration Department was happy to send me a form to apply.”

His honorary doctorate is from Keuka College, New York for community services.

Yes, he did donate 3 million yuan ($A550,000) two months ago to a Public Security Bureau training centre. “We want society to be well managed,” he says.

But a Hong Kong newspaper report about major real estate deals with the Public Security Bureau was wrong, he says.

Finally he relaxes, and talks about the principles that have made him a success.

“I am a small businessman and I honour my reputation. I focus on friendship and integrity. People who make friends with me feel secure with my friendship. If I have a friend I will never impose or create problems. I never ask them for any request. I don’t mix friendship with business.”

And then, making a point that was later repeated: “In the future we have a lot of opportunity to discuss together, now I have made friends with you.”

Chau does not deny he is friends with nearly everyone who holds high power in Guangdong, which he says is due largely to his chairing various business groups.

One acquaintance who knew him before he had money says Chau’s star began to rise when a Chaozhou neighbour, Xie Fei, was elevated to the post of Guangdong Communist Party secretary in 1991 and remained there for eight years to 1998.

A senior Guangzhou journalist says Chau’s fortunes rose again when another near neighbour, Lin Shusen from Shantou, next to Chaozhou, was appointed deputy party secretary of Guangzhou municipality in 1997 and then party secretary in 2002. They note that Chau has had uncharacteristic difficulties in acquiring a huge new land parcel, Pearl River New City, since his friend Lin was transferred from Guangzhou to run neighbouring Guangxi province in 2006.

But Chau is confident he can navigate Guangdong’s shifting sands of power.

“It’s not just one (provincial) governor that I know, but several,” he says.

Business and politics in China are locked together in an astonishingly complex web of loyalty, friendship, favours and obligation. Chau is evidently a master of that system — a system that does not always translate smoothly across political and cultural borders.

NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon complained earlier this year about foreign donations and “wealthy Chinese bankrolling a string of politicians and exerting their influence”.

Chau has been bracing for our questions on his donations to Australian politics. He pulls out a ream of typed and hand-annotated notes. He says his generosity towards political parties in Australia is a function of civic duty. “I am very happy as a citizen to play my role of participant in the democratic process.”

He says he does not get directly involved, leaving it to managers’ recommendations, and asks nothing in return.

Alexander Downer, whose local electoral committee received $30,000 directly from Chau in 2007, says: “He never asked for anything. I just got the feeling he was interested in knowing me because of the position I hold. Perhaps that’s being too modest — perhaps he just found me incredibly interesting and rather amusing.”

A Labor insider suggests it might also be about “what gets translated back home. When Chau meets with someone like as Tim Gartrell (former Labor national secretary) it’s that they’re seen to have met with the national secretary, because the national secretary in China is the top dog.”

Chau’s access in Australia extends well beyond Canberra. He was well known to former NSW Labor premiers Bob Carr and Morris Iemma, and for both he came to embody the sister-state relationship that NSW has cultivated for 30 years with Guangdong province.

In 2004, Carr’s office hired Chau’s daughter Winky as an adviser, while later that year the then-premier launched Chau’s Sydney Chinese language newspaper, the Australian New Express Daily. Winky went on to work for Carr’s successor Morris Iemma and the two have since established a business consultancy together, though Iemma says Winky is highly qualified in her own right and her father has no hand in the enterprise.

Despite his strong political and personal links here Chau’s Australian assets remain surprisingly small: two commercial properties and the newspaper. A joint venture with the University of Western Sydney providing degree content for students at his Kingold Private University in Guangzhou appears to have been short-lived.

He says attempts to persuade the NSW Government to allow him to build a Dubai-style luxury “six or seven-star” hotel in Sydney have failed to gain traction, and that Australia suffers from “lower work efficiency” than China. Nevertheless, he wants to “gradually” increase investment here.

Why has this self-made man who knocked back nearly every interview request for years granted one now? With The Age probing his record as a political donor, perhaps he thought it time to introduce himself to a broader Australian audience. Then again, it may have been compatibility on the Chinese zodiac.

“I did my due diligence and discovered that you are a tiger, and I am a horse.”

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Chinese money trail unravels

Nic Christensen and Deborah Snow

July 4, 2009

Stanley Ho would have been Australia’s biggest overseas political donor had Labor not returned most of his money.

Along with his wife, Angela Leong, and associated companies and individuals, Ho gave Labor $1.6 million in the two months before the federal election of 2007.

An embarrassed ALP head office promptly returned its share and NSW Labor eventually returned most of what it got from the Macau casino entrepreneur, manoeuvres that left Labor with $300,000 of his money. Why some was good enough to keep was never fully explained.

Unease about foreign donations is growing. The Australian Electoral Commission cannot demand declarations from foreign donors.

“Virtually no one in the Western world allows this stuff,” an ALP insider said.

Many of the donations from Chau Chak Wing, totalling $2 million, came from his companies overseas: Kingold, HK Kingson Investment and a relative’s company, Chun Yip Trading. It took the Herald two weeks to establish Chun Yip Trading, which gave the Coalition $400,000, was related to Chau. Confirmation came from the man himself.

The NSW Liberals refused to shed light on Chun Yip’s pedigree.

Through a spokesman, Chau told the Herald that he “ran a large organisation” and “there was no specific reason for using Chun Yip; it was purely a reflection of internal financial structures”.

He said Australian representatives suggested donations and he did not “personally handle day-to-day administrative matters”. The spokesman said another donor to the NSW Liberals – Tech Dragon Holdings of Hong Kong – was owned by the same relative of Chau.

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UTS Architecture Masters Scholarships

Natalie Haydon, Regan Ching, Xiaxiao Cai and Kimberley Merlino

The UTS project inspired the Australian-Chinese business leader Dr Chau Chak Wing to donate an additionall $5 million to create an endowment fund for Australia-China student scholarships.

Besides designing what I’m sure will be a remarkable building for UTS, the other major benefit of the association with Mr. Gehry, is that four architectural masters students will undertake internships in Mr. Gehry’s studio in L.A.

The four master’s students, Natalie Haydon, Regan Ching, Kimberley Merlino and Xiaxiao Cai, are the first students from an Australian university to be selected for internships at one of the world’s most renowned architecture firms.

They set off just after Christmas to spend two months working for Gehry Partners in paid positions

At the end of January the Dean of the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building Professor Desley Luscombe will lead a group of 20 students for a two-week workshop focusing on Gehry Partners.

The group, representing all years of the two-stage Bachelor of Design in Architecture/Master of Architecture program, will see the Gehry Partners design and technology teams at work, hear the architect speak about his projects, visit his buildings in Los Angeles and meet with architecture students from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.