President, China Postal Academy of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications
AGE 55
E-MAIL yjliu@cpa.com.cn
BIO This many Westerners haven't salivated at the possibility of trade with China since Victoria was Queen of England. In the mid 19th century, the Opium Wars forcefully fully opened trade with China's port cities; Liu is helping make sure that this time the trade is on China's terms. In 1993, as the founder of Chinanet, he became the father of the Internet in China. Leery of all that pesky open information that has made the Internet so popular in the West, Chinanet has some pretty stout firewalls to ensure that only government-approved information gets through.
1998 POWER PLAY Liu has called Chinanet, which has more than 1 million users, "a powerful tool in helping China make the transition from a socialist to a market economy." That's a bold statement coming from a government official. With companies like Dell and Microsoft entering the Chinese market, Liu is now trying to create a nationwide "postal computer network" which will employ wired kiosks to handle electronic data such as money remittances. He sees the possibility of gradually transforming those kiosks into a commercial network whose bandwidth is used for electronic commerce.
PLACE YOUR BETS With a population of more than 1 billion, it's no wonder the West wants a piece of the market. You may want to look into a fund like Guinness Flight China that concentrates on Chinese development.