Sun Mingnan (left) meeting with Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, during the Summer Davos 2008, in Tianjin.

Pengsheng Group setting up a charity fund, of 50 million yuan, for education and medical care, in November 2010.

Examples of Pengsheng's "Quanshui" and "Shimenshan" projects, which were meant to provide affordable housing in the city of Dalian.

Since its establishment in 1993, Pengsheng has built several million square meters of housing for Dalian.

Sun Mingnan, 27, relishes the thought of being able to exchange ideas and opinions with important business people at the "Summer Davos", in Dalian, and says that he has learned a lot from it.

This is Sun's fourth chance to attend the affair - formally known as the Annual Meeting of New Champions - as president of Dalian's Pengsheng Group. His company is a member of World Economic Forum's (WEF) Community of Global Growth Companies.

He is completely comfortable with English and feels at ease communicating with leaders from the areas of business, politics, science and technology.

"This is a place that inspires brainstorming and innovation," Sun told China Daily.

The Pengsheng Group was established in 1993 and first hit gold in the real estate boom. From there, and less than 1 million yuan ($160,000), it went on to finance, commerce, and new agriculture, and a group whose total assets exceed 3 billion yuan.

Sun said that he remembers the first time he attended the Summer Davos in September of 2008, in Tianjin. In the lounge area, he ran into Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive of the WEF.

"I was 24 years old and, when Mr. Schwab learned my age, he told me I was the youngest member of the WEF," Sun recalled, adding that he was proud.

But he was also clear-headed and realized that being young did not just mean lots of opportunities - it meant he also had a lot more to learn.

"The Summer Davos provides a place to share opinions and to learn from the world's leading business people," explained Sun.

He went on to say that it was what he learned at the forum that reinforced his ideas about human resources as the engine that drives company development.

When things got tough during the financial crisis, Sun did not reduce the number of staff and instead, made best use of the organization's structure to cut inventory. And, thanks to everyone's effort the Pengsheng Group survived the crisis relatively unscathed.

And, Sun had established good relations with his employees.

A week before this year's meeting, he paid for a trip for about 30 of his people to Hong Kong and Macao.

"These excellent employees deserve a reward because they have contributed more to the business than I have," Sun commented on sina weibo, a leading micro-blogging website.

An interesting result of this was that some of his online readers expressed a wish to join his company.

Sun has more than 22,000 of these online followers now. He uses his weibo to give his ideas on hot issues at home and abroad, and gets suggestions for various things.

Some of his followers have nicknamed him "Winnie" because one of the photos he posted resembles the cartoon character Winnie the Pooh. He accepted the name, and sometimes refers to himself as "Big Winnie".

Sun got his start in business by taking over the Pengsheng Group from his father and does not resent being called the "rich, second generation".

"My grandfather started a business in 1984, the year I was born. My father set up Pengsheng in 1993. Without their long efforts, I wouldn't have had the chance to study abroad," he explained.

Sun spent 17 years in Canada, from 1990 to 2007. After graduating from the University of Toronto, he came back to help his father in Dalian. At the end of that year, his father handed over reins to him.

"It would be dishonorable to live on my father's achievements, but, what we've made over the past four years also show that I can run the company," Sun said, in commenting on the rich child comments.

"Otherwise, my parents would not be in a position to travel around the world, as they do now."

Since taking charge of the group, Sun has applied both Chinese and Western management concepts, using his experience of studying abroad to cooperate with people from different regions.

In 2009, Pengsheng was reshuffled, producing five subsidiaries in real estate, finance, commerce, and new agriculture.

Sun's efforts have also won him many awards. He was chosen in 2009 as one of China's 10 best private entrepreneurs. He was also named a model worker of Liaoning province, and one of the top 10 outstanding young men of Dalian, in 2010. He now acts as a deputy to the Dalian people's congress.

Sun is now trying to find a healthy, sustainable developing route and entering the field of finance was the result of part of that deliberation.

"An enterprise needs a new growth point to unclog the development bottleneck. For us, financing was a good choice," he commented.

But, he never deviates from his grandfather's injunction: Build good, affordable housing for the common people.

So far, Pengsheng has built more than several million square meters of housing to provide affordable living space.

At the end of 2007, when Sun had just taken over the company, two of his projects had run into difficulties because of rising material prices and a slow business season.

"I was confused. But, when I thought of my grandfather, I just put more money into the projects to guarantee their quality and, in the end, we delivered high-quality housing to the local government - on time," Sun recalled.

"These two projects did not earn any money but they certainly demonstrated our social responsibility."

That social responsibility can also be seen in the company's charitable work. Pengsheng has given hundreds of millions of yuan to education, poverty alleviation, disaster relief, and other common causes.

In 2010, it set up a charity with 50 million yuan for education and medical care. And Sun has shown further interest by setting up a new fund of 100 million yuan in his own name.

"You know, someone asked me, 'How do you balance enterprise profits and social contributions?' Well, in my opinion, we need to make charitable contributions that accord with our capability. We do it, and it never affets the development of our enterprise," he said.

Sun Mingnan said he needs to safeguard his father's money, but that does not mean being skimpy with his money for charity.

"It's difficult to safeguard money. I'll stick to my father's words and try to find a new growth path. And, with innovation, Pengsheng will surely see good development."

Dalian's Pengsheng Group has assets exceeding 3 billion yuan and a business scope ranging from real estate to financing to commerce and new agriculture.

(China Daily 09/14/2011 page15)