Blackstone’s Schwarzman on Collaboration with China

By “Dr. Tea”, CEO of Mylovetea Company

Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 2, 2015, — Stephen Allen Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, visited Harvard University and gave his speech at the Science Center on his company and their collaboration with China, especially the Anbang Group. The personal fortune of Mr. Schwarzman is estimated to be $10.8 billion and ranked at 122nd on the World’s Billionaires List by Forbes.

Mr. Schwarzman graduated from Yale and don’t known much about the Harvard campus. I gave him a tour. He joked he was not smart enough to get into Harvard and he went to Yale when he was 18. He contacted Harvard Dean of Admission and yet the Dean said Yale was pretty good too. Stephen said, later on, the Dean felt regretful for not enrolling him to Harvard though. Also, he felt more excited to run a company than a school. However, he said: “never stop learning!”
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“Dr. Tea”(left) with Mr. Schwarzman.



During his speech Mr. Schwarzman mentioned that the Blackstone Group is a global private equity and financial advisory firm with $290 billion asset under management. He said Blackstone felt like a small company, where everybody knows everybody. This is quite different than in school due to the passive nature of large groups. He said Blackstone was able to run with little risk to achieve 18% profit and keep everything under control for a long time.

Mr. Schwarzman shared his interesting experience with Chinese Government, the story about how the 3 billion dollars to become shares for the Blackstone Group. He said instead of 3 years and 5 years share keeping term, 4 years is the way to keep each others’ face during negotiation. He said no country in the world can make things done more efficiently than China. The Secretary of State council make things happen in 2-3 days and the Secretary of premier make it by 1-2 days. He said the Chinese Government has good strategy and everyone coordinates. It is more efficient than any other organizations going through their regulations.
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VP of JFK School CSSA Cathy Guo Qi interacting with Stephen.

Mr. Schwarzman also shared the message about the collaboration with Tsinghua University. There is an opportunity that 200 students, 45% from the US, 20% from China and 35% from other countries will enroll in a jointed master degree program at Tsinghua University. “The education In China is improving and I share President Xi Jinping’s passion to build two top-10 universities in the world in China in 20 years,” said Mr. Schwarzman. Peking University and Tsinghua University now rank around top 50 in the world.

During the interaction with audience, the topics of education and relationship between China and the western world, especially the US were once again mentioned. Cathy Guo Qi of JFK School of Government asked Mr. Schwarzman how he was inspired to do this scholarship program. Mr. Schwarzman said President Chen Jining and former President Gu Binglin of Tsinghua University initiated the talk with him. He continued: “What is important? China has the largest population and the is the rising country. People consider China as a challenge to US, and I believe the Sino-US relationship should be fine. Right now the 1.3 billion Chinese have culture difference with US. And US behaves with uninformed biased way which Chinese sometimes behave emotionally when challenged.”

“Through more communication, through the collaboration program, broader view people will be formed internationally and they can keep in touch through social Medias and will be beneficial to trade, economic etc. Those global forces can be good lubricant for the future world. You are the futures! Yes, the program is started by incident but it will go on forever as protection. Bob from Yale had been participated. Harvard can participate in the future.”

“And the way of interactive study at Harvard which turns to be evolution can be studied by China. I do not know how China will evolve, but they are evolving.” said Mr. Schwarzman. Many in the audience thanked Mr. Schwarzman for sharing his belief in a brighter future for both China and US.