Stanley Wong, CEO of Light Link Group

  Guanglian Group is an enterprise wide area network operation and maintenance management service provider, headquartered in Shenzhen. "Macau is a small and inclusive city, characterized by a reclusive lifestyle and friendly people," said Wong Shu-chien, CEO of Guanglian. In 1980, when Mr. Wong was eight years old, he moved with his family from Fujian Province to Macau and found himself in a challenging environment with no knowledge of the place. In order for him to learn more about the local culture, his mother, in addition to taking care of his five other siblings, insisted on sending him to kindergarten until he graduated from high school.

  "If it weren't for the inclusive nature of the city, it would be hard for me to explain why I graduated later (at 22) than the normal person (18)," Huang said with a laugh. "I would have raised doubts about whether I would be able to move on to the next grade." However, he never faced other problems, and after completing his graduate studies in Taiwan, he was successfully hired by a Hong Kong IT company to work in sales and marketing.

  "I went to school to study civil engineering, but I gave up the booming civil engineering industry when I came out to work, because I just wanted to make more money to help my family pay off debts and tide over the difficult economic period," Huang Shuzhan recalled. Mr. Wong was born into a wealthy family and lived in a 20-room villa in Macau during his childhood. His father and grandfather were in charge of a securities company headquartered in Hong Kong. They were not only businessmen but also kind-hearted people. At that time, under the tide of developed light industry, many people would temporarily stay in the big house of Mr. Huang's family when they came to Macao for development. Their family always received tenants from Fujian Province, some of whom stayed for a few weeks or even months, hoping to take advantage of the tide of developed light industry to develop and settle down in Macao.

Old photos of Macao

  Unfortunately, when Mr. Huang was in fourth grade, the securities company his family worked for went bankrupt, and the family could barely make ends meet, let alone pay so many children's school fees. In order to stay in school, Mr. Huang found various part-time jobs, such as cutting thread residues. He recalled: "During that difficult time, I was touched by the many people who had previously lived in our extended family and reached out to help, and even the smallest kindness created a strong sense of gratitude in my heart."

  Wealth did not abandon Mr. Huang's family, Macao officially returned in 1999, Mr. Huang also experienced the first wave of rapid development of the Internet industry after graduation. In 2000, he successfully signed dozens of customer orders, earned his first income of HK $300,000 (US $38,460), paid off his debts, his family returned to a well-off life, and it was then that he accomplished the big thing in his life: he got married.

  "In my childhood, I was deeply impressed by Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, in which, in addition to the 13 virtues and patterns he pursued, the statesman generously shared his missteps for others to learn from," Huang recalled. "At that time, I also read a collection of autobiographies about Tang Taizong (598-649 AD), one of the world's greatest figures, and was deeply attracted by the stories in the collection, which was edited by Liang Shiqiu, a famous Chinese literary figure in the last century. I really like Chinese history and the world of martial arts created by the late Louis Cha Leung-yung, a famous novelist."

  Mr. Huang's previous experience of poverty, as well as his mobile lifestyle in Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Dongguan, Guangdong Province, gave him a strong will and perseverance, and more importantly, he got inspiration from books and broadened his vision. These are valuable experiences that will affect his future career.

  In early 2000, he founded Guanglian in Dongguan, focusing on the outsourcing of enterprise wide area network services. Mr. Huang said confidently: "Few business people like IT services, which is a boring and low-return industry, when enterprises have difficulties in solving the Internet, it opens a window of opportunity for our professional network services capabilities, and after network problems, we will convince them to buy our network services to ensure the smooth operation of the Internet." This professional service is well worth it."

  In 2008, Mr. Huang retired to Macau and became a stay-at-home father when his child was born a year later. It was then that the market became increasingly competitive, forcing every employee of the company to be responsible for 100 to 200 clients, and they were eager for a break, and if it were not for the tenacity of his partners, his company's story might have ended there.

  In 2013, he was surprised to find that the company was still functioning well in his absence, and that his partners had ambitious plans to expand the business to core first-tier cities such as Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. After much deliberation, he decided to return to the team and work with them on a more ambitious plan for the company, starting with the relocation of Guanglian Group's headquarters from Dongguan to Shenzhen, where there were more business opportunities.

  With the country announcing momentum to develop the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), Guanglian partnered with Huawei, China's leading IT and telecommunications company, to provide customers with a total SD-WAN solution in 2018. Mr Wong believes that the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is a major initiative for various regions to bring them closer together. In his view, though, the connection was formed long before GBA integration.

  "Our lives have been closely linked to Zhuhai in Guangdong Province since we were young," he recalls. "We would go there often because of the good and cheap vegetables, hairdressing services and so on."