Cultural Heritage
A female entrepreneur who strives for goodness and selflessness.
Release time:
2010-08-30 13:50
Lei Jufang, a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, vice president of the China Association for Promoting Public Welfare, and chairwoman of Gansu Qizheng Industrial Group Co., Ltd., comes from a rural area in Lintao, Gansu Province. She is a Han Chinese woman who grew up drinking water from the Tao River, yet she has a deep affection for the Tibetan people. After graduating from the Department of Radio Engineering—Specializing in Electro-Vacuum Devices—at Xi'an Jiaotong University, she served for 16 years as a research cadre and then as director at the Institute of Modern Physics in Lanzhou, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Lanzhou Research Institute of Industrial Pollution Control Technology, respectively. Today, however, she has turned her attention to the Tibetan medicine industry. She has established three Tibetan medicine factories—one each in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Linzhi, Tibet—and another in Yuzhong, Gansu, a region characterized by poverty. Her goal is to help both the Tibetan community and impoverished areas achieve prosperity.
In August 1993, she took the lead in “entering the market” and founded Qizheng Tibetan Medicine Group Co., Ltd. The company is rooted in the Tibetan medicine and health products industry, leveraging the unique characteristics of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. After more than a decade of hard work, it now holds 69 approved Tibetan medicine product registrations, 8 approved health supplement registrations, and 7 barley-based product lines. Five Tibetan medicine products have been listed as “National Protected Varieties of Traditional Chinese Medicine,” and “Qizheng Pain-Relieving Plaster” has been recognized as a “National Chinese Medicine Variety.”
She creates wealth yet never lays claim to it. In her view, wealth belongs not only to society but even more so to the masses. Over the past decade and a half, her company—Qizheng Tibetan Medicine—has grown into an industry leader, and she herself has written a brilliant chapter of her life through “doing good and benefiting others.” Yet she remains as humble as ever, wearing simple clothes and shoes, savoring plain tea and modest meals, unchanged by the rustic nature bestowed upon her by the Loess Plateau.
In the early 1990s, in Gannan, she first came across one of the eighty illustrated charts of Tibetan medicine—the “Chart of Embryonic Development”—which unveiled the mysteries of life. When she learned that the chart’s precise theories had been described entirely without the aid of any instruments, predating by more than a thousand years the discoveries confirmed by microscopic technology regarding embryonic development, Lei Jufang deeply felt that she had unlocked the door to a treasure trove. She also realized that her pursuit of “doing good and benefiting others” had finally found its true purpose, and her career had found its ultimate fulfillment. Thereafter, over the course of more than a year, she conducted over a hundred field trips and studies across the five provinces and autonomous regions of the Tibetan area, humbly and respectfully seeking guidance from the masters of Tibetan medicine.
In 1995, the China Guangcai Program Association organized private entrepreneurs to visit Tibet for a fact-finding mission. Lei Jufang was deeply moved by the Guangcai Program’s philosophy of balancing profit with public welfare, and she came to believe that this approach would differ from the short-term, emergency aid model typically associated with “blood transfusion-style” assistance. Instead, it would tap into the latent sources of social wealth in impoverished regions and bring about lasting improvements in those areas. Thus, Lei Jufang planted the very first seed of the Guangcai Program in Tibet. Fifteen years later, the Guangcai Program has taken firm root in Tibet, and Qizheng Tibetan Medicine’s “Tree of Life” has flourished and continues to thrive, with the project successfully operating to this day.
Qizheng Tibetan Medicine, founded by Lei Jufang in Tibet, has become a leading Tibetan medicine enterprise, driving the development of Tibet’s core pillar industries. In 2009, Qizheng Tibetan Medicine achieved total operating revenue of 469 million yuan and has been one of Tibet’s largest taxpayers and an advanced enterprise for eight consecutive years, ranking first among manufacturing enterprises in terms of tax payments.
As a female entrepreneur from Gansu, Lei Jufang has always been determined to do something meaningful for her home province. The third pharmaceutical factory of Qizheng is located in Yuzhong. Lei Jufang wrestled with this decision for a long time. Some people suggested that she build the factory in Chengdu, where the conditions were indeed quite attractive. But in the end, she firmly decided to set up the factory in Yuzhong—a county designated as a nationally impoverished area. She carefully calculated the costs and realized that if the factory were built in Yuzhong, Qizheng would have to invest an additional 6 million yuan each year. Yet she remained unmoved. After all, she understood that poor regions in the west needed even greater effort—and perhaps such effort would entail more hardship and higher costs. Today, the Qizheng Pharmaceutical Factory has become a vital economic force in Yuzhong, and its contributions to the local economy have been growing steadily year after year.
Having been engaged in the Tibetan medicine sector for over a decade through the Guangcai Initiative, Lei Jufang has steadfastly upheld her commitment to “doing good and benefiting others.” Over the years, she has cumulatively donated more than 65 million yuan to public welfare causes in Tibetan areas, including medical care, education, poverty alleviation, and disaster relief.