STAFF had routinely been directed to pore over their chairman's speeches and learn from them. One which Ye Jianm-ing, the 40-year-old founder of cefc, delivered last autumn-"Only One Step From Midsummer to Harsh Winter"-was a historical tale meant to motivate the troops. In it he compared his firm's swift rise to that of Hu Xueyan, a 19th-century merchant banker. Hu amassed a fortune trading in salt, tea, arms and silk through close ties to China's imperial elites, then fell from grace and went bankrupt.
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