Walking the Tycoons Rope: How Ambition Drove a Poor Boy from Ningbo to Compete with the Richest Men of Hong Kong & Singapore

Robert Wang fled the Chinese civil war at the age of five and came to Hong Kong with nothing. The colony was a harsh place in the 1950s and 1960s. But he was determined to rise to the top – and through hard work and resolve, he got there. The law firm he founded grew into the city’s fifth largest. With the clock ticking towards the hand-over of Hong Kong to China, and no one knowing what the end of British rule would bring, Robert hatched an audacious scheme to safeguard the fortunes of Hong Kong’s richest tycoons. He would convince Singapore to take them in. At last, he was walking with kings: dealing one-on-one with the most powerful businessmen and politicians of Hong Kong and South-east Asia. It was an exhilarating experience – but climbing so high has its dangers. After unwittingly offending the wrong power brokers, he was cast aside and left to defend himself against the damnation of corporate rumours. Robert’s rags-to-riches story offers a rare look inside the unimaginably wealthy world of Hong Kong’s property tycoons – men such as Li Ka-shing, Cheng Yu-tung and Lee Shau-kee – but also, as he tells the tale of four generations of his family, we learn that it is the traditional values of tolerance, filial piety and loyalty which endure.