K. P. Chen

Who was K. P. Chen?

K. P. Chen was a Shanghai-based Chinese banker and State Councillor, was a great innovator, as one of China's most successful entrepreneurs in the twentieth century, and was particularly influential in the financial and business world of Shanghai.

In fact, in "Banking in Modern China: Entrepreneurs, Professional Managers, and the Development of Chinese...", the author, Linsun Cheng says, "It is almost impossible to describe any significant innovation in the history of modern Chinese banks without mentioning K.P. Chen's name." This unassuming looking gent was the founder of the first modern Chinese savings bank, a travel agency, as well as the China Assurance Corporation Ltd. On Monday, Mar. 18, 1940, Time Magazine described him thus:

"Middle-aged Banker Chen looks so much like a Westerner's idea of a Chinese banker that wily and subtle-minded Americans have difficulty in believing he is as simple and direct as he is. Of average height, moderately fat, bespectacled, careful, shy of the press, close-mouthed, he has no hobbies, makes no picturesque Oriental remarks, works 24 hours a day at the unglamorous business of cementing U.S.-Chinese trade relations, and considers Chinese repayment of U. S. loans his personal responsibility. His pride: that China has repaid $2,300,000 of her previous $25,000,000 loan, is now, because of U. S. needs for tung oil and tin, ahead of schedule."