Banking and Finance in China in the 1970s and 80s

JP Morgan Chase Chairman (China) Peter Rupert Lighte has published a book, with proceeds going to benefit children in orphanages in China via Half the Sky Foundation.

Buy the book here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/pieces-of-china/6068378

From: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/12/07/memoirs-of-a-banker/


December 7, 2009, 7:41 AM ET

Memoirs of a Banker
For years, longtime China banker Peter Rupert Lighte has been diligently taking notes in the endless meetings that bankers have to sit through. Little did his colleagues realize that he wasn’t tallying profits and losses but jotting down ideas for his sideline profession of memoir writer.

Now the chairman of JP Morgan Chase Bank (China) Co. has published them in a book aimed at helping Chinese orphans. “Pieces of China” evokes an era of late 1970s, early 1980s Taiwan and China, when Lighte–a trained scholar of classical Chinese–was getting started in banking and both regions were in the midst of huge economic changes.

The book is available free online but Lighte hopes readers will buy the book for $18 with profits going to Half the Sky Foundation , one of the few foreign-run charities that has been licensed by the Chinese government.

Now 60 years old, Lighte has kept diaries for years but says the stories are drawn entirely from memory. Most striking is that they are replete with telling details, such as the time he was at a dinner table for U.S. Thanksgiving with President Ronald Reagan and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang. Zhao wondered why the holiday was celebrated with mere poultry and kept quizzing the president on the price of turkey in the U.S., while the president kept trying to talk about the pilgrims.

“In a funny way, only details are worth remembering,” Lighte said in an interview. “The beauty is in the detail of recollection–it’s the only thing that brings you into the present of the memory.”

Most evocative are the stories about the strange world of banking and business in the early 1980s. Lighte was living, like many foreign businessmen, in the Jianguo Hotel–they were not allowed to rent apartments. He write about his relations with Chinese people, including a funny story on how his assistant tried to get hair to grow on his bald head.

Beside helping orphans, Lighte hopes the stories will mean something to his two adopted Chinese daughters. A student of the “Book of Changes” (the “Yi Jing”), Lighte wants them to see that while the pace of change in China is rapid, it’s connected to a past that they shouldn’t forget. “In a funny way when you live in China it’s a unique period of time but it’s all a piece of the cloth.”

– Ian Johnson