Business

Li Ka-shing

Left school before 15 when his father died of TB; worked 16-hour plastics shifts and became Asia's richest man.

Born: 1928 · Chaozhou, China
Roots: Chaozhou Chinese; fled to Hong Kong as a wartime refugee at 11
Family: Working class; His schoolteacher father died of tuberculosis soon after the family fled the Japanese invasion; Li, who caught the disease himself, became the breadwinner at 14.
Education: Left school before 15; self-taught from second-hand books
Started with: 16-hour shifts; Sold watch straps and worked plastics-factory shifts to feed the family; factory manager by 19.
Affiliations & societies: None documented.; Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1950 · age 21
Cheung Kong PlasticsHK$50K
Founded with savings and family loans.
1957 · age 28
Plastic flowers
Reads Italian trade magazines, retools the factory, and rides the export boom.
1967 · age 39
Buys through the riots
Acquires Hong Kong land cheaply while others flee — the fortune's real foundation.
1979 · age 50
Hutchison Whampoa
The first Chinese owner of one of the old British trading houses.
2018 · age 89
Retires$3B given
Ports, telecoms, retail, and utilities across 50+ countries; his foundation's giving exceeds $3B.

Sources

Compiled from these references and contemporaneous press reporting. Figures are approximate; verify before relying on them.