Harry Stine was witness to China's rise

Harry Stine, a self-made billionaire in Iowa and owner of the world's largest privately owned seed company Stine Seed, fondly remembers his first visit to China in January 1976.

"We landed at Beijing, made a semicircle in China and came back to Shanghai. There were very few Americans who had visited China at that date. It was interesting for us to learn," Stine recalled. "We were there as guests of the Chinese government, (which) wanted to show to a segment of Americans exactly who China was and what they were doing."

They visited industrial locations, schools, hospitals and farms. "It was a wide-ranging experience which I greatly appreciated," he said.

When the group stopped by at a road construction site, Stine was fascinated by how locals were building the road and has photos of him picking up a shovel and mallet.

"The mallet was being used to crack stones for the road construction. I was just doing it for fun. Some Americans thought that Chinese were doing things inefficiently. I recognized that the Chinese were using the resources they had at that time to the best of advantage. So I always had appreciation for their common sense and logic and how they were doing things," Stine said.

Another photo showed a classroom of an elementary school in China at that time.

"Most of the schools were not heated, it would be nice if they were, but economically at that time that's the thing to do — not to waste money on energy. Some people would view it as negative, but I view it as positive," Stine said.

Stine's parents were married in 1929, immediately before the Great Depression worldwide.

"I grew up poor, and we were very careful with resources. Today, Americans aren't as careful with resources. In China, particularly in that time, they were very careful with resources. I had great appreciation of that, which maybe other people didn't have."

They also visited some historical sites such as the Great Wall.

"We didn't understand exactly how it [the Great Wall] worked. So visiting it and being told about it, and the fact it was built in sections, it's very interesting. It's nice to visit something known worldwide and historical," Stine said.

Stine said he was actually impressed because people sometimes try to show things better than they are, and show things that are not realistic, but he was shown the real China.

"When I was there, everyone was riding bicycles and wearing blue uniforms. I thought we had an excellent understanding of where China was and where they were going," he said.

"Today in China there are eight-lane roads and new cars. If you told me that China would make as much progress between then and today as they have, I would say that's impossible.

"Henry Kissinger was there just a year ahead of me in 1975; he and I were at the 2015 China Development Forum in Beijing, and he said exactly the same thing with the same observation. The economic transformation was almost unreal," Stine said of China's development in the last 40 years.

Since 2012, Stine began working with Chinese seed companies and providing high-yield corn and soybean seeds to farms around China.

"We are very active there in agriculture. Our original businesses are in soybeans – originally the soybeans were from Asia and primarily China – that's another reason I have great appreciation for China," Stine said.

For years, Stine had a working relationship with Syngenta – a global giant in agrochemicals and seeds. A couple of years ago, Syngenta was acquired by ChinaChem and became China-owned.

"Our Syngenta program has expanded significantly since then. Many of the programs we are doing with Syngenta are intended for China," Stine said.