China’s economy was just starting to open up in the late 1980s when a determined high school dropout made his way to Beijing with 600 pairs of shoes.
Ding Shizhong had them made in a relative’s factory and now he was going to sell them. The money he earned paid for his first workshop where he began making footwear for other companies.
The 17-year-old was one of China’s many newly minted entrepreneurs as capitalism took off under the watchful eye of its Communist Party rulers.
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