When Zhang Ke left Coopers & Lybrand in 1999 to set up his own accounting firm, some doubted the upstart would survive. Outside Coopers – now part of PwC – and the other big western outfits, the profession in China was weak. This did not deter Mr Zhang. “I thought China was so big, it should have some of its own accounting firms,” he recalls.
Little more than a decade later, the gamble has paid off. ShineWing, the firm he started, is snapping at the heels of the industry’s biggest names in China and the avuncular, soft-spoken Mr Zhang has become perhaps the most influential accountant in the land. “He is the dean of the accounting profession right now in China,” says Paul Gillis, a professor at Peking University. “He’s the guy.”
Such praise will be hard to swallow in some quarters. Scandals have given Chinese accounting a toxic reputation internationally. Instead of Zhang Ke, the name on the lips of many western investors is Muddy Waters, the research firm that has levelled accounting fraud accusations against several Chinese companies. Carson Block, Muddy Waters’ founder, has said questionable auditing is endemic in the fast-growing Chinese market.