Club Lunch: Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America

Long before he became a top financier, Weijian Shan was sent to do hard labor as a teenager in the Gobi Desert. Mr. Shan shared the story of his remarkable journey from the desert to the halls of America’s most prestigious universities as it is told in his new book, Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America. He discussed what life was like during the Cultural Revolution, the changes China has undergone since then and his views on the future of business in China and the pivotal U.S.-China relationship.

Weijian Shan is Chairman and CEO of PAG, one of Asia’s largest private equity firms. Prior to PAG, he was a partner of TPG, a private equity firm based in San Francisco, and co-managing partner of TPG Asia (formerly known as Newbridge Capital). He led a number of landmark transactions including the acquisitions of Korea First Bank and China’s Shenzhen Development Bank, both of which were made into case studies of Harvard Business School. Before that Mr. Shan was a managing director of JP Morgan, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a farm labor in China’s Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco. He studied English at Beijing Institute of Foreign Trade (now Beijing University of International Business and Economics) where he also taught as a faculty member. He received no formal secondary education.