Ma opened the doors of Ping An to foreign investors including HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
[2] The Times calls him "a seasoned infighter who engineered the emergence of Ping An as an independent insurer from its earlier domination by the Chinese state banks, which were its principal shareholders.
In the mid-1980s, Ma worked as a young assistant manager at China Merchants Group’s social security office in Shenzhen’s Shekou district.
He persuaded senior executive Yuan Geng, who later retired as group vice chairman, to allow him to explore the possibility of helping the state-owned trading house set up an insurance unit.
The book references Confucius as the individual who embodies the best of traditional Chinese philosophers and Albert Einstein as the best in Western scientific philosophy.