SECURITY guards had to draw a ribbon for crowd control when Shenzhen businessman and mountaineer Wang Shi appeared at Nanshan Book City on Sunday to sign copies of his memoir "Wang Shi: Twenty Years with Vanke."

It's rare for an entrepreneur - especially one in the real-estate sector - to gain such popularity in a country where the rich are often criticized for showing little social responsibility.

Over 20 years, Wang Shi, 55, led Vanke from a small corn trading company to the largest listed real-estate developer on the mainland. His company is the only listed mainland company showing uninterrupted profits for 14 years. But it was his mountain expeditions that made him a national star. After stepping down as Vanke CEO in 1999, Wang started climbing mountains, reaching the highest peaks on every continent, including the North and South Poles.

Wang, who remains the board chairman of Vanke, spends one-third of his time traveling the world, but the company retains healthy growth, "because the right system and corporate culture have been established," he said.

Wang said one reason he wrote the book was to help other companies avoid making Vanke's mistakes. One of the most serious mistakes was blind growth. Wang shrank the company in time, but similar expansion ruined many other companies. Wang also stressed simplicity and transparency in company management, a break from a thousand-year-old tradition.

To people interested in history, "Twenty Years with Vanke" is a book that describes China's reform era from the perspective of an insider. The memoir includes many landmark events for the city and the company. The most interesting ones, perhaps, are how Vanke issued its first stock in 1988, how a scuffle between police and eager stock buyers resulted in a stock disaster in Shenzhen in 1992, and how China's real-estate industry grew up. The obstacles Vanke met in breaking away from its State-owned mother company were typical of Chinese companies at the time.

"Twenty Years with Vanke" chronicles a Chinese entrepreneur's growing awareness of social responsibility. "When a company's ability reaches a certain level, it should contribute more to society. Chinese companies, including Vanke, still need to learn how to become good corporate citizens," Wang wrote.

In fact, Vanke has just announced that starting in May it will build inexpensive rental apartments for low-income Shenzheners.

Wang, in the preface of his book, says he learnt a lot from mountain climbing. While acknowledging that managing a company is more difficult than climbing a mountain, Wang said it was the high-altitude expeditions that taught him the truth about life.

"Before climbing mountains, I had thought building Vanke into a successful company would occupy my entire life. But now I know I can do many other things," wrote Wang.

Editor: Wing