The firm invested $800 million and more than doubled production capacity by 2009, becoming Asia's first and then the world's largest maker of packaging paper.
The firm entered 2011 with revenues of US$3.8 billion, 17,000 employees and the capacity to produce thirteen million tons of containerboard and packaging materials per year.
[8] In the March 2008 Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference annual meeting, Zhang proposed "tax reforms that would include a tax cut of one-third for the nation’s wealthiest citizens, lower duties on imported environmental equipment, and... from a new labor law designed to protect low-paid factory workers."
[1] In October 2006, she became, at the age of 49, the first woman to top the list of richest people in China published by the Hurun Report.
[4] In 2010 Zhang's personal fortune was valued at approximately US$4.6 billion, making her the wealthiest self-made woman in the world, ahead of Oprah Winfrey, J.K. Rowling, Giuliana Benetton, Meg Whitman, and Rosalia Mera.
She met her second husband, Liu Ming Chung, in Hong Kong and the couple married shortly after moving to America.
Liu was born in Taiwan, grew up in Brazil and was trained as a dental surgeon, a career path he left in order to pursue the paper business with his wife.
Her older son Lau Chun Shun is a non-executive director of Nine Dragons,[8] and Zhang has stated that her children's inheritance of the company would depend on their objective capabilities.