Li Lu Appears in Fortune Report

Li Lu, one of the key leaders in the 1989 student movement, has been largely staying out of the media limelight in more recent years. He made a rare appearance in the April 27 issue of Fortune magazine in a report on Warren Buffet's investment in electric cars made in China. In the print version, the magazine also contains a box segment introducing Li Lu:

Warren Buffet may be BYD's most famous investor, but Li Lu, whose company LL Investment Partners owns 2% of BYD, has quite a story of his own. Born in China in 1966, Li Lu was raised by foster parents after his were forced into labor camps during the Cultural Revolution. As a 10-year-old, he barely survived an earthquake that killed 250,000 in the city of Tangshan. Then things got really interesting: Li Lu became a leader of the pro-democracy movement that organized protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, appeared on China's Twenty-One Most-Wanted List, and escaped to New York, where he was embraced by the human-rights community and earned three degrees from Columbia. After stints at Allen & Co. and DLJ, he met Charlie Munger through friends and started his own investment fund; Munger, the Berkshire vice chairman, is his largest investor. Li Lu, who is not allowed to travel freely in China, politely declined to be interviewed by Fortune. When asked about Li Lu's story, BYD CEO Wang Chuan-Fu says: "That's past history. Today, Mr. Li and I share the belief that the best way to help China move forward is to make BYD a world-class company."