South-East Asian tycoons’ high-wire act

IN 1919 CHIA EK CHOR moved to Bangkok and set up a small shop importing seeds from his home Chinese province of Guangdong. Two generations later the business, Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, is Thailand’s pre-eminent conglomerate, peddling everything from chickens and pigs to cars and phones. The founding patriarch, who died in 1983, adopted a Thai version of the family name, Chearavanont. But he maintained a deep affection for his ancestral home. When recited in Mandarin, the first characters of his four sons’ names—Zhengmin, Daimin, Zhongmin, Guomin—spell out “fair, great China”.