(Correspondent: Gong Yanli) "2018 Top 10 Persons of the Year 2018 for Chinese Economy" award ceremony jointly produced by Sina Finance, People's Daily (client terminal) and Channel: WU was held in Beijing Performance Center on January 18, 2019. Two alumni of the School, Song Zhiping (doctor of 1996), Chairman of China National Building Materials Group, and Zhou Haijiang (EMBA of 2008), Chairman and CEO of HODO Group, were elected "Person of the Year 2018 for Chinese Economy". On January 19, Professor Wang Zongjun, Dean in the School of Management, sent his congratulations in letters.
He is the head of two "Fortune 500" companies and is known as the "Godfather of Mixed Ownership Reform" in China; he led the building material industry in China to become the king of cement from scratch, and proved the formula of "strength of central enterprises + vitality of private enterprises = enterprise competitiveness" with practice. In 2018, the Group achieved the best business performance in history, with 7 global-scale top achievements, taking a new step toward high-quality development. Salute to Song Zhiping, the Chairman of China National Building Materials Group, as the Person of the Year 2018 for Chinese Economy.
Song Zhiping
Another Alumni's award speech pinpoints that he was the promoter and defender of the reform and opening up, and he developed HODO Group from a handicraft workshop to a large-scale multinational enterprise group of strong competitiveness in the world. In 2018, he led the construction of SSEZ as the "Model of Sino-Cambodia Pragmatic Cooperation". With the win-win principle as the basis, he handed in a brilliant answer to the "Belt and Road Initiative", leading the Chinese private enterprises to a higher level. Salute to Zhou Haijiang, Chairman and CEO of HODO Group, as Person of the Year 2018 for Chinese Economy.
Zhou Haijiang
In his speech, Song Zhiping says that, for his 40 years of engagement in the enterprise, he has witnessed and participated in the whole process of the reform of the state-owned enterprise from a technician to a leader of the central enterprise, during which he has encountered many bumps and waves, as well as the joy of success. He determines to be devoted to one career for his whole life, believes in the correlation between efforts and achievements, and regards Descartes' sentence, "hardworking bees have no time to be sad", as his motto. 40 years ago, he never imagined that he could become an entrepreneur, nor did he imagine that he could bring two enterprises into Fortune 500, let alone that he could stand here to receive the award. Song Zhiping says that it is the great era of reform and opening up that makes such impossibilities possible. After so many years of service in the enterprise, he feels that the most important thing in an enterprise is persistence and the sense of responsibility. At the beginning of 2019, the situation is changing steadily with some worrying factors in it. At the worrying moment, he thinks of the entrepreneurship, responsibility and leadership as what really matters. He understands that entrepreneurs are people who are eager for success, indomitable in the face of difficulties, willing to contribute, and brave to go forward. Song Zhiping thinks of that as the great entrepreneurship.
Zhou Haijiang also made a speech on the award-winning speech around the word "responsibility". He thinks that he feels more responsibility for the honor. In fact, in the past 30 years, it has always been such kind of responsibility that spurred him. In 1987, when a university teacher quit his job and went to the enterprise, his responsibility was actually to change and improve the lives of individuals and families. With the expansion of the enterprise, in 1992, Jiangsu HODO Group became the first provincial township enterprise group in the province. Then, the enterprise scale was so huge, and he felt that the greater responsibility was to be responsible for the enterprise, so that his employee fellows could gain better working conditions and income. After being listed in 2001, he thought that since the enterprise had been a part of the society, its development should be responsible for the society and more people. Zhou Haijiang said that when they came to Sihanoukville in Cambodia in 2008 to build a park zone, they felt a new responsibility, that is, to pay attention to their vision and the image of the country and the nation represented by the enterprise, therefore, the enterprise's responsibility there is to make sure that the park would be well operated, and only by such means could it be worthy of the project and image of the country and the nation at abroad.
In the following interview, Song Zhiping answered that "as an entrepreneur and a leader of an enterprise, the most important quality to be persisted in is the responsibility, that is, the responsibility to his enterprise" to the question proposed by the interviewer. When being asked about the best moment in 2018, Zhou Haijiang said that the biggest potential for private enterprises' transformation in 2018 may be October 1. "I attended the forum held by the General Secretary, which means so much to the private enterprises like us. He said that private enterprises are in the same camp with us. 'I think our private enterprises are in the same camp with us", said the General Secretary, and we shall also make great efforts to serve the camp", said Zhou.
It is reported that the selection of "Top 10 Persons of the Year 2018 for Chinese Economy" focuses on the theme of "salute to the driving force in the era", selects the leaders of all walks of life from the five dimensions of "innovative, subversive, forward-looking, growing and sustainable", and covers all the fields of Chinese commerce. Since the launch of the selection on August 20, 2018, after more than two months of investigation by the Organizing Committee of the Evaluation, 136 most representative candidates have been selected from the thousands of entrepreneurs participating in the contest. On November 6, they accept the 51-day online voting. According to the comprehensive decision of online voting and evaluation by the judges, the winners in "Top 10 Persons of the Year 2018 for Chinese Economy" and "New Prominence of the Year 2018 for Chinese Economy" were born.
