U.S. trash has made Zhang Yin China's richest person.
Zhang in 1990 started collecting wastepaper in Los Angeles and shipping it to China to make the cardboard needed by growing export industries. Her company, Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd., is now China's biggest packaging maker. Nine Dragon's stock has risen fourfold since its March initial public offering, pushing Zhang's fortune to $4.7 billion.
``Other people saw scrap paper as garbage, but I saw it as a forest of trees,'' Zhang, 49, told reporters last November in Hong Kong. ``I had to learn from scratch. The business was just my husband and me, and I didn't speak a word of English.''
Investors such as Merrill Lynch & Co. and Baring Asset Management are betting on Zhang, the daughter of a revolutionary- era army officer, as the Chinese companies that make everything from computers to bicycles demand more and more cardboard boxes. China's exports have increased fivefold to $762 billion during the past decade.
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