Learning to care

For her generation, or men and women who started their careers in the reform era, she has done it all - from being Bill Gates' first China manager to being the first to translate Nobel laureate and Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus. But for her, something more exciting has just begun: "To be a social entrepreneur."

Wu Shihong (known to her overseas friends as Juliet) says the words rather calmly. Yet that calmness doesn't hide the devotion in her eyes. "That's the way I've found for myself," she tells China Business Weekly.

At the beginning of 2000, when Wu walked through the revolving door of TCL Group, China's largest TV maker, she was already quite used to media praise.

She had been one of China's first-generation professional managers - by working her way up from a cleaner, a nurse, a marketing executive, through self-education and learning on the job.

She had been the general manager for the world's most famous multinational IT groups Chinese branches (Microsoft 1985-1998; IBM 1998-1999).

She was China's first successful international corporate executive to join the executive team of a domestic private firm.

Wu was seen as a symbol for the new generation of business executives that China has produced in its economic reform and opening up.

Yet since she left TCL in 2002, she has kept a low profile. When she came back to the limelight at the end of 2007, she surprised the public again by being the translator of Yunus' books about poverty-aid and micro-credit, and in her determined work with NGOs and NPOs in various social programs.

'Social entrepreneur'

Wu says she feels proud of being among China's "social entrepreneurs." "The two words meld my past careers to my present interests and my social and philanthropic pursuits. They affect me greatly," she says.

So what is a "social entrepreneur?" She gives her definition:

It's a person who deals with a social problem in a similar way as managing an enterprise. Poverty-aid, social development, and even philanthropy should be understood as going somewhere, giving out money and things, and off you go, she argues.

"All of them need smart leadership and good management, because they don't just distribute money, but should also generate development. To be successful and to grow into a sustainable process, they need as much entrepreneurship as a for-profit business does."

Not every successful businessperson decides to shift their focus from making money to helping others make money. And certainly many do not. But from Flying Against the Wind (the title of Wu's autobiography published in 2002) about her shift from corporate life to "social entrepreneur," what was the cause of so much change?

"There have been ups and downs in my life," Wu recalls, very calmly. "Life has taught me how important it is to be able to define my own way, and my own feeling of happiness, by working with others. As a businesswoman, I have seen all the fame and wealth that one can possibly see in her lifetime. But that shouldn't be the end of a life."

She says she spent much of the last five years, which she called her "rest", reading classic books (of which some Buddhist readings are among her favorites) and considering the meaning of life.

"I was led by my reading experience to my turning point." As she is saying this, her face is glowing with a kind of peace one seldom sees in the corporate office.

But her newfound peace is not just one woman's own spiritual pursuit. It leads to action, and to facing challenges. It was in 2003, amid the national public health alarm for SARS, she decided that it was her moment to charge.

After persistent requests directly to the central government, Wu landed her a chance to volunteer with the Ministry of Public Health. She worked with the ministry's international corporation division, and helped set up and manage some of the emergency conferences for international public health ministers to discuss the crisis-control measures.

"It is quite difficult communicating with different countries' governments and companies," Wu says. But the experience helped her learn how to leverage the power of the government, and the resources of the business community and the public, and to use all of them to solve a social problem.

Wu was glad that the campaign in which she played a part helped put the disease under control. And with that valuable experience, she began to spend more time thinking about how she can best use her managerial acumen for society.

"I had read some books about social responsibility to finish my MBA work. But that's it. It was only when I felt the urge to do something that I felt the thirst for more readings and more information -about philanthropy and the management of non-profit programs," she says.

Hence friends' recommendation of her first book to translate - How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, by David Bornstein, who also wrote The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, about Muhammad Yunus.

One of the things that puzzled her was micro-credit and why it worked in some parts of the world but not in China. Hence, her second translation was Yunus' Banker to the Poor, published in June 2006.

"I was so excited, and inspired, when I heard about what Yunus had done, by running a sustainable micro-credit business from his Grameen Bank, to help people earn their own way out of poverty. This is not just a business to lend money. It is to spark creativity. It is leadership," she says. "I thought I must introduce his book to China."

Translator

In the beginning, it was hard to reach Yunus, via electronic network. Then she turned to the traditional way of correspondence and posted a letter to him. "Juliet, how can I refuse such a pleasure? Go ahead!", Yunus replied. These were the words which came to her in merely three days and have remained in her mind ever since.

Wu finished her translation in just two months. The Chinese book was published on June 2006, which "did not seem to arouse an immediate response", Wu recalls.

But just four months later, when Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize, Banker to the Poor, and Wu's translation was soon on China's bestseller list.

In the meantime, Wu began to embark on exploration tours, to rural areas in China's frontier regions, working with different charity and aid organizations, such as the ALXA Society Entrepreneur Ecology, founded in 2001 by Song Jun, a Chinese entrepreneur, who invested 50 million yuan in the Moon Lake Ecological Tourism Zone in Alxa League of Inner Mongolia.

As for TCL, Wu says, she only goes back to it once or twice a year as an independent non-executive director.

Now she says she is "exploring a commercially sustainable way of operating aid and philanthropy," and continues her reading and learning quest. Recently, she published her third translation, Capitalism 3.0, a book by Peter Barnes about issues in corporate social responsibility. "It encourages us to consider the future of our world," he writes. "Everyone holds the social responsibility to protect our planet and our coming generation."

For Wu, her active "rest" in the last five years has been like a "self-renewal", a change from a leading corporate force to someone with the knowledge and experience, along with her contacts, to launch a loftier social enterprise. "Something more down-to-earth. Something more practical."

But what is it? She smiles and says: "I'll let you know when I'm ready."

(China Daily 11/17/2008 page12)