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200 ‘BEST UNDER A BILLION’: JAPAN JUMPS AUGUST 2017 • WWW.FORBES.COM PLUS 50SINGAPORE’S RICHEST 5-STAR STIR SONIA CHENG IMPORTS ROSEWOOD HOTEL BRAND UNDER WING OF HER HONG KONG CLAN AUSTRALIA...............A $12.00 INDIA............................RS 375 KOREA........................W 9,500 PAKISTAN....................RS 600 TAIWAN......................NT $275 CHINA....................RMB 85.00 INDONESIA............RP 77,000 MALAYSIA...............RM 24.00 PHILIPPINES..................P 260 THAILAND......................B 260 HONG KONG................HK $80 JAPAN.................¥1238 + TAX NEW ZEALAND.......NZ $13.00 SINGAPORE..............S $12.50 UNITED STATES........US $10.00 CONTENTS — AUGUST 2017 VOLUME 13 NUMBER 7 S PAGE 20 10 | FACT & COMMENT // STEVE FORBES “I WAS SHOCKED, Crackdown on North Korea unavoidable now. EVERYBODY WAS SHOCKED.” SINGAPORE’S 50 RICHEST — Sushi King founder 42 | MAYO FOR THE MAINLAND FUMIHIKO KONISHI Loo Choon Yong is taking his Raffles hospital brand to China. on Malaysia’s large appetite BY JANE A. PETERSON for sushi 46 | WHEN THE ‘LOVE’ GOES Choo Chong Ngen woos a different customer to his new inn brands. BY JESSICA TAN 50 | THE LIST Fortunes rise amid a bitter battle in Singapore’s first family. BY NAAZNEEN KARMALI BEST UNDER A BILLION 26 | MAKE IT FLOW Zhang Chunlin gave up a prized state job to hustle for China’s burgeoning water industry. BY JANE HO 29 | LESSONS LEARNED Asset-heavy Indian schooling firms sink after good early marks. BY ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN 30 | EYEING NEW MARKETS Why China’s largest ophthalmological chain is focusing on the U.S. BY ELLEN SHENG 32 | THE LIST Sales of our top 200 publicly traded Asia-Pacific companies grew an average 55% last year. BY CHRISTINA SETTIMI COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY VIRGILE SIMON BERTRAND FOR FORBES UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED, ALL TOTALS AND PRICES EXPRESSED IN OUR STORIES ARE IN U.S. DOLLARS. 2 | FORBES ASIA AUGUST 2017 CONTENTS — AUGUST 2017 VOLUME 13 NUMBER 7 COMPANIES, PEOPLE 12 | SCORING WITH THE ‘UNSCORABLE’ Chinese fintech firms use their big data to extend credit to the smartphone masses. BY REBECCA FENG 15 | FACE TIME China is quickly embracing facial-recognition technology, for better and worse. BY YUE WANG 16 | NEXT TYCOONS: HONG KONG HOMECOMING Sonia Cheng grew up in New World hotels. Now she’s opening new ones for the family S PAGE 46 empire as her Rosewood Hotel Group keeps expanding. “PEOPLE THINK BY RON GLUCKMAN 20 | REINVENTING SUSHI HOTEL 81 MEANS Entrepreneur Fumihiko Konishi is serving up halal sushi for the masses. GEYLANG. DIFFERENT BY CHEN MAY YEE NAMES CAN CATCH 23 | THE NEW FACE OF FLIGHT Cirrus CEO Dale Klapmeier talks personal single-engine jets. DIFFERENT FISH.” BY RICH KARLGAARD —CHOO CHONG NGEN, Hotel 81 24 | SERIAL PLEASURE founder, with daughter Carolyn, CFO China’s online reading craze is so big it’s challenging Amazon’s Kindle. BY JINSHAN HONG 70 | AUSTIN POWERED Real estate mogul Nate Paul has an $800 million net worth. Wait until he turns 31. BY NATHAN VARDI T PAGE 42 76 | DEAL TOY: A PIECE OF THE ROCK Looking back at the 1989 purchase of Rockefeller Center by a Japanese conglomerate. “THERE ARE PLENTY BY ANTOINE GARA OF DOCTORS, IF YOU 77 | BORDEAUX TO YIWU KNOW HOW TO LOOK How European wine is now going to China on Silk Road trains. FOR THEM.” BY WADE SHEPARD —LOO CHOON YONG, cofounder TECHNOLOGY of Raffles Medical Group 60 | BUILD, RACE, FIGHT . AND CHAT Discord’s communications service for gamers has outgrown messaging giant Slack. BY KATHLEEN CHAYKOWSKI FORBES LIFE 78 | THE LONG GAME An exclusive look at Congaree, a new South Carolina golf club. BY ERIK MATUSZEWSKI 80 | THOUGHTS On bubbles. 4 | FORBES ASIA AUGUST 2017 Semarang, Central Java Where history will complete your leisure Ever remember when history was fun? No? It's probably because you haven't seen them face to face. Here, history comes alive before your eyes and will greet you like you're their next door neighbor. Feel Indonesia's vibrancy of the past yourself in events such as Kota Lama Festival (September), where you can feel, taste, and hear old traditions in Semarang's Old Town, Borobudur Masterpiece Ballet (August), where you can watch the legendary tale of Buddha’s teachings, and Reog International Festival (September), where you can witness a mystical performance of Reog Ponorogo. Get lost in the old soul of Indonesia's cultural experience, or have another. You can have it your own way in the land of endless wonders. www.indonesia.travel indonesia.travel @indtravel indonesia.travel FORBES ASIA SIDELINES Editor Tim W. Ferguson Editorial Director Karl Shmavonian Art Director Charles Brucaliere Senior Editor John Koppisch Uneasy Anniversaries Wealth Lists Editors Luisa Kroll, Kerry A. Dolan Photo Editor Michele Hadlow Statistics Editor Andrea Murphy his summer brought Research Director Sue Radlauer a couple of significant Online Editor Jasmine Smith 20-year anniversaries Reporter Grace Chung T in Asia. Neither was what Intern Rebecca Feng you’d call a celebration. Editorial Bureaus It was July 1997 when Beijing Yue Wang Hong Kong was handed Shanghai Russell Flannery (Senior Ed.); Maggie Chen India Editor Naazneen Karmali over to the People’s Repub- lic of China. I was visiting Contributing Editors Bangkok Suzanne Nam Moscow at the time, seeing Not exactly party time in Hong Kong. Chennai Anuradha Raghunathan the aftereffects of Soviet Hong Kong Shu-Ching Jean Chen times, and felt more than a little trepidation. I had fond days in the crown Jakarta Justin Doebele colony—fonder I’m sure than some native Hong Kongers did. But ambiva- Melbourne Lucinda Schmidt lence about this switch wasn’t limited to the expats. Perth Tim Treadgold Singapore Jane A. Peterson Today there is ambivalence in spades. Yes, Hong Kong is richer still, Taipei Joyce Huang more gleaming. It still has formal rule of law and a separate status from Vietnam Lan Anh Nguyen the rest of China—is in fact of use to Beijing for that reason. Beneath the Columnists Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Ben Sin surface, however, the ground is moving, and many long-timers sense it. Production Manager Michelle Ciulla Still, although the economic border with the mainland is increasingly porous, Hong Kong remains an outpost. This is most obvious regarding free speech—so evident again in the outpourings there in memory of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident and Nobelist who died while a prisoner of EDITOR-IN-CHIEF the state and whose work was officially hidden from his people. Steve Forbes For all that, Hong Kong’s return to China likely was inevitable. Like- wise, the Asian Financial Crisis that began in summer 1997 was long in the CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER Lewis D’Vorkin making. Debt and currency manipulation to service an entrenched elite, FORBES MAGAZINE plus the overreach of many who wanted to join in the good life, brought EDITOR Randall Lane EXECUTIVE EDITOR Michael Noer a comeuppance. Western financial poohbahs didn’t alleviate the situa- ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR Robert Mansfield tion, and ordinary strivers suffered years of consequences. Yet from that FORBES DIGITAL collapse came a sounder order. Asia today has fewer booms but is more VP, INVESTING EDITOR Matt Schifrin widely prosperous and, ideally, has less likelihood of an awful bust. VP, DIGITAL CONTENT STRATEGY Coates Bateman There are still shortcomings in much of “tiger” Asia’s practices, includ- VP, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Salah Zalatimo ing crony capitalism and undemocratic processes. Popular sovereignty VP, WOMEN’S DIGITAL NETWORK Christina Vuleta ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS is, of course, still part of the Hong Kong rub. Twenty years on from that Frederick E. Allen – Leadership eventful summer, what’s transpired calls for neither cheers nor tears but Loren Feldman – Entrepreneurs Janet Novack WASHINGTON for reflection and resolve. Michael K. Ozanian SPORTSMONEY DEPARTMENT HEADS Mark Decker, John Dobosz, Clay Thurmond Avik Roy OPINIONS Jessica Bohrer VP, EDITORIAL COUNSEL FOUNDED IN 1917 B.C. Forbes, Editor-in-Chief (1917-54) Tim Ferguson Malcolm S. Forbes, Editor-in-Chief (1954-90) James W. Michaels, Editor (1961-99) Editor, forbes asia William Baldwin, Editor (1999-2010) [email protected] KYODO/NEWSCOM 6 | FORBES ASIA AUGUST 2017 We like to take a different path. Yours. Entrepreneurial thinking. Private banking. efginternational.com EFG International’s global private banking network operates in around 40 locations worldwide, including Zurich, Geneva, Lugano, London, Madrid, Milan, Monaco, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Taipei, Jakarta, Miami, Bogotá and Montevideo. In Singapore, EFG Bank AG’s principal place of business is located at 25 North Bridge Road, #07-00 EFG Bank Building, Singapore 179104, T +65 65954888. EFG Bank AG, Singapore Branch (UEN Number: T03FC6371J) is authorized as a licensed bank by the Monetary Authority of Singapore pursuant to the Banking Act (Cap. 19) and is an Exempt Financial Adviser as defined in the Financial Advisers Act (Cap 110). 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