Investment bankers have nothing but plaudits for Gao Jian, the man who is turning China into one of the world's premier borrowers. A smallish, soft-spoken individual, Gao is the director general of the state debt-management department at the ministry of finance. He cuts a distinctive figure, sporting a shock of spiky hair, a worsted silk tie and chunky black, rectangular spectacles.
His English is fluent and, uncharacteristically for someone of his seniority, he does not use a translator. A graduate of Beijing University, which he attended at the age of 28 (he was born in 1949), he goes down well with international investors in roadshows and one-on-ones. Bankers say he is direct and prepared to think about issues that concern investors, such as Chinese political risk. He is even able to answer sensitive questions, although he answers the really sensitive ones in a really sensitive way. All told, bankers who know him say that even sometimes confrontational US fund managers are won over. "When you meet Gao, you feel comfortable," says one. "He's very professional and very honest. He's also got a real grip on the issues. Investors usually go away impressed."
Life has not been easy for Gao - as with many of his generation - and his career path has been complicated. He is from Hailar, a small town in the far north of China, and after school he was sent as a teenager to work on a farm in Inner Mongolia, adjacent to Siberia, one of the children of the Cultural Revolution. Afterwards he went into the army for four years and later spent time in the public security bureau, before attending university.
The fact that his English is so good is all the more surprising because he has never lived in an English-speaking country. He did not attend a US university like many contemporaries now commanding large salaries at investment banks. His only foreign posting was a six-month extended training course in Milan in the early 1980s.
He joined the ministry of finance after graduating in economics in 1982, spending five years in the comprehensive planning department, before moving first to the statistical department, then to the legal division. In 1990 he was made deputy director-general in the state debt-management department. He played a role in China's return to the market in 1987 with a Dm300 million ($163 million) issue. He is the only person in the ministry to have worked on all of China's deals, which include a global bond and a 100-year yankee. When China began to borrow actively again in 1994 it was a natural step for him to be made the new head of borrowing, as the ministry began to take over the Bank of China's traditional role of state borrower.
He loves western art and during roadshows makes time to visit the National Gallery in London and, his particular favourite, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. When China issued its global bond last year via CSFB and Morgan Stanley, the $700 million five-year was so popular that a $300 million 10-year tranche was included a few days later. Gao made the decision from Italy - for which he retains a great fondness - where he and his team had gone during the pricing.
He believes in leaving some money on the table for investors, an approach that was probably born of the terrible impression left after China's 1994 bond widened greatly following the US Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates. Prestige is as important for China as raising the money - which it does not necessarily need since it has one of the biggest pools of forex reserves in the world. Indeed, Gao's job is especially important, because the perceived failure of any of China's bonds is viewed as a bad reflection on the country's international reputation.
What does he do when he's not tapping the markets for money? Not golf. Instead he relaxes by knocking a hollow plastic white ball at high velocity across a ping-pong table. He plays regularly and is coached by a former Chinese table-tennis world champion. He is said to be as nimble round the table as he is with international investors. Steven Irvine