Deacon Chiu

Entrepreneur extraordinaire Deacon Chiu is the Founder and Chairman of Far East Holdings, a transnational business colossus that straddles the oceans. He first arrived in British-controlled Hong Kong in 1950, fleeing the communist revolution in China. He sold his wife's jewelry to finance his first business, selling slide advertisements to movie theaters. He saved to buy a theater of his own, a deficit-ridden second-run house, and built the leading cinema chain in the territory. In 1958, he founded the Far East Bank to serve small farmers in the New Territories of Hong Kong, and began his expansion into Indonesia and Southeast Asia. In the early 1970s, he took his ventures public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, as Far East Consortium International Limited, and Far East Holdings International Limited. He built amusement parks in Hong Kong, Indonesia and across Southeast Asia, and bought Marineland in Southern California. He acquired hotels in New York and Paris and built a chain of hotels and luxury apartment buildings across Malaysia and mainland China. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1984 gathering in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Deacon Chiu recalls his impoverished childhood in Shanghai, and his determined rise to wealth and success. He advises the Academy's student delegates to read all they can, value their time and apply their creativity to whatever they undertake.