Saturday morning, and Sun Wen Jie, chairman and chief executive of China Overseas Land, is dressed down in a red sweatshirt. His office is modest and he has a Chinese flag on his desk. He says that he tries to use his image to influence the behaviour of his staff.
"My public image is of a hardworking sincere man, who is very good at managing relationships and I think I am also considered rather steady and perhaps," he pauses to bellow a big laugh, "a little boring." Bankers have a slightly different perspective. They say he is one of the most important of any of the PRC nationals living and working in Hong Kong. "Mr Sun is a true patriot," one banker told Euromoney. "He believes in building the company for the people."
"As a young man I was bred with the ideal of makiing China a rich and wealthy country and making peoples' lives better," he notes, speaking always in Mandarin.
He was granted the National Outstanding Individual Award by the State Council of the People's Republic of China in 1995.