Chinese leader Xi Jinping last year summoned dozens of leaders from the nation’s top private companies to a rare meeting , calling on them to help China navigate economic difficulties.
Because its petrochemical business has a heavy debt load, they said, and relies heavily on Russian and Iranian crude, sometimes buying at up to a 25% discount to market prices, it turned to cheaper sanctioned crude in part. People familiar with the company’s operations say Hengli has been buying sanctioned oil since at least late 2020, with purchases expanding after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Eventually, they were able to buy a bankrupt silk-weaving factory, Chen said in a speech last year, turning it into a thriving business. A longtime Hengli employee told a state-owned newspaper that Fan, who handled the finances, was so busy that she sometimes skipped meals. Once, after a worker dyed her hair blonde, she rushed back to the hairdresser to make it black again, worried she would look out of place at the company, the worker said.
Chinese state media has attributed Hengli’s accomplishments to Chen and Fan, saying they transformed a small textile factory into the country’s third-largest privately owned company through hard work and business savvy. She also avoided drawing attention to herself. Hengli’s investment was well-timed. For years, Beijing had restricted privately owned refineries from importing crude oil. margins were thin and production capacity was low Although teapots could source feedstocks domestically from state-owned powerhouses such as Sinopec and China National Petroleum.
With operations spanning petrochemicals, textiles and shipbuilding, it employs more than 300,000 people and records revenue north of $100 billion a year—more than Tesla or Boeing—according to the company’s website. Chen, Hengli’s founder and chairman, is now one of China’s richest men, with an estimated fortune of $20 billion, up from $2 billion around a decade ago, according to Forbes. His wife, Fan Hongwei, who chairs the petrochemical and refining business, has a net worth of over $5 billion.
To the outside world, Hengli—which in Chinese means “eternal strength”—may not ring a bell. It has also become a major importer of illicit Iranian crude , according to industry analysts, shipping brokers and the U.S. But inside China, it has become an industrial juggernaut. Hengli’s other businesses weren’t sanctioned.
Treasury, which sanctioned the company’s refinery business earlier this year, saying it bought billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian petroleum.
