A CAPTAIN of industry made a memorable return to the ancestral village his forefathers left generations ago during a high-level mission to China.
Leading a senior delegation for strategic business engagements and bilateral dialogues, Sunway Group founder and chairman Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah visited Dongguan City in Guangzhou province.
The visit unfolded against the backdrop of China’s Greater Bay Area, the sprawling economic mega-region that Beijing hopes will rival the world’s leading centres of innovation and finance.
Through meetings with local officials, dynamic entrepreneurs and university professors in Dongguan, the delegation was given a close look at the scale of China’s ambitions in technology, urban planning and advanced manufacturing.
The trip carried a distinctly personal dimension for Cheah, a third-generation Malaysian Chinese of Hakka heritage, whose ancestral roots trace back to Fenggang town in Dongguan, which is part of the Greater Bay Area.
At the City University of Hong Kong Dongguan, Cheah delivered a keynote address titled “From Dongguan roots to a RMB130bil (RM76bil) empire: The Journey of a Malaysian-Chinese Entrepreneur” to more than 800 students, academics and government representatives.
In his speech, he traced Sunway’s journey from its humble origins in tin-mining to its position as one of South-East Asia’s leading conglomerates.
He spoke of the importance of inculcating good core values to succeed in business, alongside the need for long-term investment in education to shape a more sustainable future.
Cheah also expressed hope that Malaysia would draw valuable lessons from China’s remarkable success and decades-long development strategy.
The delegation also visited Youganpu Primary School, the sister school to SJK (C) Gunong Hijau in Pusing, Perak, which is one of the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation’s adopted schools.
Pupils greeted Cheah with songs, flowers and performances celebrating Hakka culture while an exhibition marking the school’s 90-year history highlighted decades of educational exchange and cultural ties between communities in China and Malaysia.
The emotional moment of Cheah’s visit was at Tangli Village, where village elders and distant relatives welcomed him and his sons, Evan and Adrian, back to the family’s ancestral home.
Their return offered a poignant moment of reflection on the hopes, sacrifices and aspirations that carried generations of overseas Chinese families who journeyed abroad in search of a better future.
