How Li built the fortune
Li Xiting's wealth is built on Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics, which he co-founded in 1991 with Xu Hang and Cheng Minghe. At the time China's hospitals depended heavily on imported equipment from American, European and Japanese manufacturers, which was expensive and often hard to service. Mindray set out to design and build comparable devices locally at lower cost, starting with patient monitors used at hospital bedsides.
The company reinvested heavily in research and development and broadened its range into ultrasound imaging, in vitro diagnostics such as blood analysers and reagents, and later anaesthesia machines, ventilators and other critical care equipment. Its products found buyers first in Chinese county and city hospitals and then in emerging markets, before gaining ground in Europe and North America. Mindray's diagnostics business is especially valuable because each installed analyser generates repeat sales of reagents.
Mindray listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2006. A decade later Li and his co-founders took the company private, judging that its value was not reflected by US investors, and in 2018 it relisted on the ChiNext board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The domestic listing gave the company a much higher valuation and turned Li's stake into one of the largest fortunes in Chinese healthcare. Demand for ventilators and monitors during the Covid pandemic further raised the company's profile around the world.
Government policy has also played a part. Beijing has encouraged hospitals to buy domestically made equipment where comparable products exist, and large public procurement programmes have favoured suppliers with scale and local service networks. At the same time, centralised purchasing has put pressure on prices, so Mindray's results depend on keeping costs low while moving into higher end products that compete directly with the largest Western device makers.
Companies and holdings
Li's main asset is his shareholding in Mindray Medical International, held through investment entities he controls jointly with his co-founders. He serves as chairman of the company. Mindray's main divisions are:
- patient monitoring and life support, including monitors, defibrillators, anaesthesia machines and ventilators
- in vitro diagnostics, including chemistry, immunoassay and haematology analysers and reagents
- medical imaging, mainly ultrasound systems
Mindray has grown partly through acquisitions. It bought the patient monitoring business of the American company Datascope in 2008, acquired the ultrasound maker Zonare in 2013 and later added diagnostics businesses in Europe and China, including the German company DiaSys. Its products are sold in more than 190 countries, with research centres in China, the United States and Europe.
The founders have kept control since the domestic listing, and Li, Xu Hang and Cheng Minghe remain the company's largest shareholders through their holding entities.
Early life and career
Li Xiting was born in Chongqing and studied at the University of Science and Technology of China, one of the country's leading technical universities. He studied physics, a background that suited the engineering problems of medical devices, where precise sensors and signal processing are central.
Before founding Mindray he worked at Shenzhen Anke High-Tech, one of the early Chinese companies in medical electronics, based in the special economic zone that was then becoming the centre of China's electronics industry. The experience showed him both the size of the opportunity and the gap between Chinese and foreign products. With his partners he left to start Mindray in the same city. Li later became a citizen of Singapore, where he lives.
Philanthropy and public life
Li keeps a low public profile and gives few interviews, leaving most public communication to Mindray's management. Little has been reported about large personal donations, and he is not associated with a prominent foundation bearing his name.
Mindray as a company has donated medical equipment during public health emergencies, including large shipments of monitors and ventilators to hospitals during the Covid pandemic, and it has supported medical training programmes in China and in developing countries. Li's public role is largely confined to his position as chairman and to the company's annual shareholder meetings.
Unlike some Chinese entrepreneurs of his generation, he has not sought a role in politics or in industry associations, and he rarely appears at public events outside the company.