Despite his high profile as the president of China National Chemical Corp (ChemChina) and the former general manager of the Blue Star Group, Ren Jianxin's early life was spent far away from the limelight. His earliest work experiences were in the largely rural Dunhuang county in Gansu province and it was here that he developed his ambitions for success.

Recalling that time, Ren, who secured a masters degree in economics at Lanzhou University, said: "Those years helped me learn to fear neither disadvantage nor difficulty and taught me to pursue my goals persistently."

In 1984, he launched the China National BlueStar (Group) Corporation, China's first professional chemical cleaning company, alongside seven young colleagues and with the backing of a 10,000 yuan loan.

Before embarking on his own business career, he served as the secretary of the youth league committee in the Ministry of Chemical Industries.

In its early days, BlueStar focused on washing tea urns and boilers, before progressing to cleaning the launch facilities of Shenzhou, China's first experimental manned spacecraft. Eventually securing 90 percent of the domestic industrial cleaning market, BlueStar outgrew rival operations in Japan and Germany and became the world's largest industrial cleaning company.

In 1990, Ren then began a series of mergers and acquisitions, ultimately involving some 107 State-owned chemical enterprises. The most significant of these came in 2004 when the BlueStar Group merged with Ren's former company, the Ministry of Chemical Industries, to create what is now the China Chemical Group. Ren was then widely seen as having been the driving force in the Chinese chemical industry's largest restructuring initiative. He was also becoming recognized as the undisputed king of mergers and acquisitions in this field.

As the president of such a dynamic business, his broader vision turned to overseas acquisitions. In 2006, BlueStar acquired the French-owned Adisseo Group, the world's second largest methionine manufacturer and Kerneos, Australia's largest polythene producer. In the same year, it also bought the organic silicon business of Rhodia, another French company.

For many, it was now hard to imagine that such a leading chemical producer, with annual sales revenue and total assets both in excess of $17.4 billion, had emerged from a small business that had once washed tea urns for just 0.2 yuan a time.

In order to boost the company's overseas development, in 2007 Ren secured $600 million in foreign investments by striking a deal with a US private equity firm, the Blackstone Group. This was directly in line with Ren's plans to become a strategic investor with abundant experience in the global chemical industry and with considerable available capital.

In a recent conversation with Tomas Koch, a senior director, and Ren Zuting, associate director of the Mckinsey consulting company, Ren underlined that creating value for shareholders and providing employment opportunities remain the company's dual mission statements.

On the list of top 100 chemical enterprises in 2008 unveiled by the Internet Corporate Identity System (ICIS), the world's leading information provider for the chemical and oil industry, ChemChina ranked number 19 in global chemical companies.

Last year ChemChina was also listed as one of the top 500 Chinese enterprises by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, ranking 28. It is first in the industry for chemical materials and products.

Ren was honored as the "CCTV Economic Personality of the Year" in 2007 and was awarded "the Entrepreneur of the Year" title (2006) by the Federation of Chinese Entrepreneurs and the Chinese Entrepreneurs Association. In 1993, he won the national "May 1st" Labor Medal. Early in the 1980s, he was listed among the "National Outstanding Young Entrepreneurs" and the "National Top Ten Young People".