Yang Guoqiang, the 53-year-old founder of the Hong Kong-listed Country Garden Holdings Co., is a generous man. So generous, in fact, that he has helped his daughter, Yang Huiyan, top the ranking of China's richest people in 2007. The younger Yang's wealth, coming largely from her acquisition of her father's shareholding in the private company in 2005, is estimated at $16 billion by Forbes magazine (October 8), while Shanghai-based independent researcher Rupert Hoogewerf put the figure at $17.5 billion.

Yang hails from Shunde, a county town in south China's Guangdong Province. From an extremely poor village farmer to a property magnate, who owns almost the largest chunk of the mainland's real estate assets, Yang is well-known for his toughness and low-key public image. He was recruited as a construction worker, like most of China's migrant workers in the early years of opening up and reform. In the 1990s he acquired wastelands and in 1997, when government control over land resources was relaxed. He later created Country Garden to sell properties to the newly affluent middle class. China's booming property market has blasted into profitability since then, bringing Yang huge earnings.

Yang Huiyan, nominally the biggest stakeholder of the company, now studies at Ohio State University and is expected to take over the leadership from her father. However Yang senior, as chairman of the company, which holds extensive tracts of land, will continue to steer the ship and has no plans to retire soon.

Yang is not only generous to his daughter, but also to others who are in need of help. "He is a man who understands how to respect wealth instead of being obsessed by money, thanks to his previous life experience of hardships and difficulties," a close colleague said. In 2002, Yang opened a charity middle school to assist poor students by providing totally free education. To date, his donation to this school has exceeded 260 million yuan ($34.62 million). In 1997, Yang funded a scholarship valued at 1 million yuan ($133,155) annually, which was raised to $2 million in 2006, and it has helped more than 4,000 university students over the past 10 years.