BEIJING - JP International is a large Chinese company named after its owner, Dr. Jiang Ping ("JP") Huang. But in China's business community, many half-jokingly say these initials stand for "Jewish People, Inc.": Huang is the businessman primarily responsible for opening China's door to Israeli companies in the 1990s. Already in the 1970s, Israeli businessman Shaul Eisenberg, who served as a go-between, flew defense ministers, government officials and representatives of the defense industries to China in his private plane, to promote weapons deals; the Mossad espionage agency provided the necessary documentation and cover stories, while the military censor prevented publication of information regarding these activities. Today, however, JP - as he prefers to be called - is doing these same things in broad daylight, and not just in the defense realm.

In his debut interview with an Israeli newspaper, held last week in his office in one of Beijing's skyscrapers, JP said his connection with Israel came about quite coincidentally. It was shortly after the two countries established diplomatic relations, in January 1992. He was just starting out in business and living in New York when an Israeli friend asked him if he was interested in doing business with Israel. He had met Jewish people in the United States, but didn't know of Israel's existence. The friend suggested he travel to Israel to meet businessmen, and JP agreed.

After arriving in Tel Aviv and settling in at the Dan Panorama Hotel, JP recalls that he heard a knock on the door one day. It was Yitzhak Hofi, chairman of Tadiran. JP didn't know who he or his company were. The two agreed to meet the next day, and when JP arrived at Hofi's offices, he immediately realized he was dealing with a major firm. Hofi introduced his Chinese guest to some of his colleagues; some were military men and some, says JP, turned out to be former Mossad officials.

The connection with Hofi led JP to meet Rafi Eitan, then chairman of Israel Chemicals, as well as the heads of the Israel Export Institute. Since then the Chinese businessman has visited Israel dozens of times, and hosted many Israeli businessmen in Beijing. He has sold Tadiran's communications and military equipment, plus seeds and agricultural products - mainly Netafim's irrigation systems - in China, where he has served as distributor and consultant for a growing number of Israeli companies. These include Nice Systems, a high-tech firm, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and a few others. At present he is still involved in a number of ventures involving Israeli firms.

JP says he did not have any connection, however, with the controversial deal involving the airborne Phalcon early-warning system IAI manufactured for China - which was canceled due to American pressure.

He was associated with the agricultural exporter Agridov, owned by the Israeli government, which began operating secretly in China even before diplomatic relations were established. Amram Olmert, the director general of the company who later served as Israel's agricultural attache in China, and who has a close relationship with JP, recently published a book in Hebrew about China and devoted a chapter to him.

Jiang Ping Huang was born in 1960 on a military base in the city of Changsha. His father was a general in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and was closely affiliated with Marshal Lin Biao, who defeated the Kuomintang army of eight million and enabled Mao Zedong to take control of China in the 1949 revolution. JP admits today that he grew up in a well-connected family that lacked for nothing, although it didn't actually own anything.

When JP was six, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution and the youngster joined the Red Guards like many of his peers, although he was too young to understand the significance of his decision. He had a very strict upbringing: In the morning the children went to school and in the afternoon they were sent to work in the fields and factories. Mao wanted to brainwash young people with communist ideology, and forced them to learn it from the farmers, workers and soldiers, JP explains.

Marshal Lin was promoted to the No. 2 spot in the leadership and was marked as Mao's successor. In September 1971, however, a plot to kill Mao, which Lin organized, was uncovered, and he, his wife and son tried to flee to the Soviet Union. Over Mongolia their plane crashed in mysterious circumstances, and all its passengers were killed.

Meanwhile, JP explains, due to his father's ties to Lin Biao, and a short time after the failed assassination, his father was put under house arrest and disappeared for two years. Upon his return, he concluded that his son had to acquire a practical trade. At 16, like every teenager who finished his studies, JP was sent to a remote village to work in the fields. But when the villagers heard that he also had carpentry skills, they preferred to have him make furniture. As the village carpenter, the young JP made quite a nice wage - which fired his imagination.

In 1976-77, Mao's Cultural Revolution came to an end. One of its victims, Deng Xiaoping, took over and initiated a policy of relative openness in foreign relations, and reforms at home. Among other moves, he canceled the system that allowed that only those defined as party "loyalists" could study at the universities. JP was accepted to Szechuan University of International Studies where he studied English, and later completed his master's degree in American literature at Xiamen University, which he says is one of the top 10 institutions of higher education in China today.

Although he was also one of the victims of the Cultural Revolution, JP still compares Mao to God, saying: "He truly understood the Chinese soul. The fact that China has a skilled and disciplined work force today, and that it understands the process of globalization, is thanks to Mao. But perhaps his greatest contribution was that he simplified the language and reduced the number of strokes in most of the Chinese characters. Many people think Mao harmed culture and tradition, but he reduced illiteracy and ignorance."

But, I remind JP, Mao did that forcefully and with a brutality that claimed millions of victims. His response: "Israel also brutalizes its youngsters when it forces them to serve in the army."

Don't you have any criticism of Mao?

JP: "People in the West don't understand China and therefore compare Mao to Hitler or Stalin. But almost all Chinese think of Mao as I do - in positive terms. His problem was that he was ahead of his time, that he had what today is defined in NBA terminology as star mentality or star quality - and stars behave arrogantly."

During his studies JP was hired by China's Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade and joined the Communist Party. After his studies, he was sent in 1983 by the ministry to Vienna, and later was asked to join the Paris-bound entourage of then prime minister Zhao Ziyang, who appointed JP as his translator. (Zhao later became party secretary and president). JP recalls that those were good years - years of lofty ideals, which crashed with the violent repression of the student demonstrations in the Tiananmen Square events of 1989.

Back to business

At one point, about a year earlier, JP had been sent by Zhao to do a doctorate in economics at Rutgers University in New York, to become an "expert in capitalism and the market economy," as he puts it. However, he was so excited by the student protest back home that he returned and joined in, going to Tiananmen Square daily and meeting soldiers - some of them comrades-in-arms of his father - with whom he and his fellow students argued. He remembers asking the soldiers how they could consider him, the son of a general in the People's Liberation Army, an enemy.

In June 1989 Deng Xiaoping got the upper hand, the moderate Zhao was removed, and the student protest was mercilessly suppressed.

Realizing which way the wind was blowing, JP signed a consulting contract with an American firm and returned to the U.S. From a highly idealistic young man with a sense of public mission, he switched onto a different track: "I realized that my government career had come to an end and decided to do something new, so I created a business." First he served as a consultant to firms like Coca Cola and Levi's, and later he expanded the range of his activity.

In the corner of his office today stands a pottery urn that serves as a base for a container of mineral water. "I made my first million dollars from that," he says explaining that when he was 32, he founded a plant to produce the urns for a U.S. firm that supplied mineral water; each item cost $7, and was sold for $11. JP manufactured 400,000 urns the first year, and earned $1.5 million.

At present, together with partners, he is the owner of a group of businesses worth about $1 billion, which employs over 2,000 people in three divisions: an investment bank, with assets totaling about $300 million; factories involved in chemical, food, printing and photography industries, among others; and a real-estate division. He is also active in academia, lecturing at universities and even running a school of business administration, to train the next generation of executives. He also managed to finish his doctorate at a Chinese university, to marry a Canadian and father two children.

As his involvement has expanded into other areas, his ties with Israel have decreased somewhat, JP says, but they are still solid. He recently joined up with an Israeli firm listed in London to lease more than 100 square kilometers of land in western China to grow trees to produce ethanol and wood chips. His consulting firm is advising Strauss-Elite on how to expand into China's markets, and his Shanghai subsidiary has established a joint venture with a major Israeli diamond firm to open stores and on-line channels to sell diamonds and jewelery across the country.

"Israel has become too small for me," he explains, although there are Israeli businessmen who still want to work with him.

One problem, he observes, is that there is "too much competition among the Israeli firms themselves. Instead of uniting their ranks and working together, they compete with one another. Israelis have no respect for each other, and have difficulty working cooperatively."

In addition, he says, "I'm afraid that Israel's business community does not really understand China. They think that they can 'conquer' it, but fail to understand that the entire world is competing for the Chinese market. Nevertheless, Israel has a huge advantage. The Chinese greatly admire the Jewish people. The average Chinese person does not distinguish between a Jew and an Israeli, and thinks that a Jew is a smart person.

"Israel has a technological advantage over many countries worldwide, and therefore it should concentrate on selling know-how and sophisticated technology. But Israelis are impatient and hesitant in business. You have to do business with China quickly; if you hesitate, you've lost an opportunity. Unaware of the importance of its size and complexity, some Israelis also feel disdain for China and think it's a backward country."

Copyright Ha'aretz News 2008