Snow, have you seen my Yahoo posts from a few weeks ago (and i repeated the thought in some thread last week) about Zhang Guoxi, the founder of the old woodcarving firm, Jiangxi XiDa? Online you'll find an old NY Times article on him by Nicholas Kristof in 1992, and also online (at google.com books) an entire lengthy chapter on him in a 1995 book, Chinese Awakenings, which i recently bought at amazon.com for a penny plus P&H-- it's a fascinating story.
In brief, Zhang Guoxi is not only one of China's pioneering entrepreneurs and still one of China's richest men with his Guoxi Group international business empire, he's also a very high ranking C.P. official (had to achieve this status to prevent being executed by Maoist fanatics during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s before Deng Xiaoping's reforms).
I'd bet good money that JADA's ceo Hua-Cai Song (who oversaw that staff of 700 workers for Jiangxi XiDa in the 1990s and up til that woodcarving business was sold to the XiKai Mine for jade-distribution rights in Jan. 2008):
a) was personally mentored by Zhang and groomed to be Jiangxi XiDa's CEO;
b) is still a friend of Zhang (JADA's offices are located in the Guoxi Group's home-base building in Zhang's hometown of Yujiang, Jiangxi Province); and
c) that Zhang "has Song's/JADA's back" in the event of any legal trouble with XiKai Mining Co.
I even suspect-- though i've not been able to sleuth it out-- that Zhang Guoxi's "baby," the Jiangxi XiDa lacquerware woodcarving business, was sold to someone he knows at XiKai Mine. This is speculation-- but i don't think Zhang would let such a beautiful business on which he'd worked so hard for decades and even risked his life many times (enduring death threats from the Maoist zealots in the 1970s for being a "capitalist running dog") be sold out of his friendship circle to some Joe Shmoe "outsider" in China.
In China, SO MUCH hinges on personal relations, and friendships are quickly formed and closely bonded.
Thus, i surmise (again, please indulge my speculations further here) that Zhang Guoxi is very interested in the new jade-selling direction occasioned by the creation of JADA and that he is JADA's "friend in high place." The guy has too much clout and i think he's not going to let JADA fall into oblivion on any abrogation of the contract by XiKai Mine.
Glen and Gary, if you do eventually rep JADA as its I.R. firm with your China Growth Partners, i'd be very curious if Yicheng Tong could find out more on the past and present relationship of JADA CEO Hua-cai Song with Zhang Guoxi. I think it may be one of JADA's hidden strengths that most of us don't even know about....
