Starting or growing a business successfully may look like something at the end of the rainbow but, for Siegfried Lee Siu-fung, chairman and chief executive of ROY Ceramics, his family's "international vision" has paid off.

As a third-generation overseas Chinese - his grandparents saw success in Thailand and his parents were born in Thailand - Lee won fame in Hong Kong, once lived on the Chinese mainland and his business now embraces Europe and North America. He has witnessed how overseas Chinese businesspeople have shone on the global stage bit by bit.

"You must have the international perspective in mind when doing business," Lee tells Hong Kong's young entrepreneurs. "To be specific, if you have an education background on the Chinese mainland, it would be wiser for you to launch a startup in the (Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao) Greater Bay Area. If you're educated at overseas universities or have lived in other countries, you can fully apply their resources to your projects."

"Smile at history" is another life course for Lee.

Asked about the obstacles he had encountered in the past years, he responds: "You could find a better place and environment to raise your business. Voting with your feet rather than attributing it to external factors is a wiser choice".

"There's no need to mention how much you've suffered again and again if you choose to invest."

Lee highly values the effectiveness of technologies in modern products, sales and marketing, saying that artificial intelligence and other front-line technologies are incubated by a historical stage of development.

"As an investor, you don't need to pursue the market trend deliberately as the combination of virtual economy and physical economy is the key to success," he says.

joycesun@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 08/03/2018 page9)