Tan Kah Kee was born in
Xiamen, Fujian Province, in 1874 during the
Qing dynasty of China. In 1890, at the age of 16, he travelled to
Singapore in the Straits Settlements to help his father, who owned a
rice trading business. In 1903, after his father's business collapsed, Tan started his own company and built a business empire from
rubber plantations, manufacturing, sawmills, canneries, real estate, import and export brokerage, ocean transport and rice trading. As he was proficient in
Hokkien, he achieved much success doing business in
Singapore because Hokkien was the common language of
overseas Chinese in Singapore throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries. His business was at its prime from 1912 to 1914 when he was known as the "
Henry Ford of the
Malayan community". Tan had a leading role among the 110 founders of
Tao Nan School in Singapore. In 1921, he set up
Xiamen University and financially supported it until the
Nationalist government of the
Republic of China took over in 1937. In 1920, Tan arranged a marriage between his daughter, Tan Ai Leh, and
Lee Kong Chian, his protégé and a businessman. Tan was one of the prominent overseas Chinese to provide financial support to China during the
Second Sino-Japanese War. He organised many relief funds under his name, one of which alone managed to raise ten million
Straits dollars in 1937. He was also a participant in the
Legislative Yuan of the Nationalist government in
Chongqing. After the Japanese invaded and occupied Malaya and Singapore in 1942, they deemed these contributors "undesirable" and conducted systematic extermination of anti-Japanese elements in Singapore through the
Sook Ching Massacre. Tan survived because he escaped from Singapore before it fell to the Japanese, and went into hiding in
Malang, a town in
East Java province,
Indonesia. He strongly rejected proposals to attempt to negotiate with the Japanese and regarded such attempts as characteristic of a
hanjian (a Chinese term for
race traitor). He also attempted to dissuade
Wang Jingwei from such activities. He exercised considerable effort against the governor of Fujian Province,
Chen Yi, for perceived maladministration. In 1943, while he was in
Java, Tan began writing his memoirs,
The Memoirs of an Overseas Chinese of the Southern Ocean (), which later became an important document of the history of the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Tan was the
de facto leader of the Chinese community in Singapore, serving as chairman of the
Chinese Chamber of Commerce and helping to organise the
Hokkien clan association. However, he lost this role when the
Chinese Civil War divided Singapore's Chinese community into
Communist and
Kuomintang sympathisers. Tan Kah Kee has consistently demonstrated a keen interest in business, philanthropy, and education, with a dedicated commitment to uplifting ASEAN and his homeland, particularly in Jimei and Xiamen. He refrains from aligning with any political party but advocates for the principles of diligence and achieving commendable outcomes. The venerable individual does not concern himself with affiliations or factions and disapproves of malpractices within the Kuomintang. In 1947 Tan founded the
Chiyu Banking Corporation in
Hong Kong, an intended to be a sustainable business with profits to be devoted to education in Xiamen and the rest of Fujian province in China. After the Communist victory in China and the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Tan tried to return to Singapore in 1950 but was denied entry by the British colonial authorities concerned about communist influence in Singapore and Malaya. He then moved permanently to China and served in numerous positions in the Chinese Communist Party. Tan died in 1961 in Beijing and was given a state funeral by the Chinese government. In Singapore, the
Tan Kah Kee Scholarship Fund, which later became known as the
Tan Kah Kee Foundation, was established in memory of this philanthropy. ==Personal life==