Since moving “for love” to the US aged 17 with $20 in his pocket, Donald Tang has been a dish washer, an investment banker and a media mogul, with his rags-to-riches tale winning him fame in his native China.
But his latest role as executive chair of Shein, the fast fashion group that was valued at more than $60bn in a recent funding round, has propelled him on to the global stage as he helps lead its rapid expansion overseas and prepares it for a blockbuster London listing.
With the company’s co-founder Sky Xu shying away from the limelight — Shein employees joke that they would not recognise him if they were in the same lift — Tang is “the face and the most visible leader of the company”, according to one person who works with him.
As both a Mandarin speaker and Asian-American executive, Tang has deftly navigated the business and policy climate in his native and adoptive countries as his career advanced. But as ties deteriorate between the US, Shein’s main market, and China, where it was founded and most of its clothes are made, his role is becoming more challenging.
Responsible for public affairs, business strategy, corporate development and finance, he now faces the task of getting an initial public offering over the line in London after ditching earlier plans to list in New York in the face of US political opposition.
Born in Shanghai to academic parents, Tang met his future wife Jean at a maths competition when he was 14, and succeeded in skipping an academic year in order to be with her. He moved to California in 1982 to follow Jean when her family emigrated.
His English was rudimentary but conversations with Americans during his long bus rides to and from English classes helped him improve. “Retired Americans going to the beach had the same route as me and liked to chat with me, a young Chinese person,” he told local media in 2006.
He studied chemical engineering at California State Polytechnic University Pomona and worked in hospitality to make ends meet.
“I didn’t take any vacations during my first 12 years in the US,” he told Securities Market Weekly. “My first job was in a restaurant and I remember that the minimum wage was supposed to be $3.35 an hour but the boss only gave me $1 because I was from the mainland and I didn’t have a green card. It involved washing dishes, cleaning toilets, and wiping tables.”
Using his now wife’s salary to start day trading, he eventually landed a job at Merrill Lynch. After joining Bear Stearns in 1992, he quickly climbed the ranks to vice-chair of the firm and subsequently became chair and chief executive of its operations in Asia, with his rise on Wall Street receiving significant attention in his homeland.
“China is my birthplace,” he told Chinese media. “The achievements, knowledge and theories I have today ultimately come from being Chinese. My success in the company and my status in American society are still dependent on China’s rise and development and the interdependent economic relationship between China and the US.”
He left, however, in 2008 as the investment bank lurched into the global financial crisis and was absorbed by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
A sharp dresser partial to snakeskin shoes whose miniature Australian shepherd dog Saatchi is a constant fixture on family outings, Tang’s next move was to reinvent himself as a dealmaker connecting China with Hollywood amid growing demand for entertainment content in both countries.
He facilitated Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda’s 2012 acquisition of US cinema chain AMC and in 2015 founded Tang Media Partners, a media holding company based in Los Angeles and Shanghai whose backers included Chinese internet group Tencent. Two years later, TMP bought US distributor and producer Open Road Films as part of an ambitious expansion plan.
But his foray into the industry was shortlived, with several of Open Road’s divisions filing in 2018 for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US to allow for the sale of the group’s archive of assets.
He formally joined Shein in November 2022 as executive vice-chair, having advised Xu for more than a year.
Tang is “charismatic and intelligent” and has “been a powerful force in shaping the future of Shein”, according to the person who has worked with him.
And he enjoys conversations with regulators despite not always seeing eye to eye with them, according to another person close to him.
But it has not been plain sailing. The effectiveness of his lobbying efforts is in doubt after Shein’s plans for a foreign listing met a wall of scepticism in the US and the UK, mainly around Shein’s vast supply chain and allegations of links to forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region, which the company denies.
Like many of its rivals, Shein has also attracted the ire of campaigners who argue that large fashion retailers are responsible for heaps of cheap, poor-quality fashion that ends up in landfill.
The company this week launched a €200mn “circularity fund” aimed at tackling fashion waste and called on rival retailers, sovereign wealth funds, investors, policymakers, non-profit organisations and academics to join the initiative.
Some executives at the company have begun to question whether Tang is the right person for the job, according to one Shein insider, especially after a faux pas in May at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles where he called Shein, now headquartered in Singapore, an “American firm”. The remarks received a cold reception in China, where they were taken as a sign that the company was trying to “de-Chinafy” itself ahead of an IPO.
In the UK, after talks between Tang and Jeremy Hunt this year there was a feeling in the Treasury that the meeting with the then chancellor of the exchequer was “being used” to put pressure on listing authorities in New York, according to one person familiar with the situation.
“Shein wanted a meeting and publicised it presumably to wind up the [US] Securities and Exchange Commission,” they said, adding that the meeting had been portrayed as successful, with the then Conservative government keen for a listing, even though Hunt “was non-committal”.
The company declined to comment on the meeting, saying it never shares details of private conversations.
While the UK’s new Labour government has indicated it supports Shein’s IPO plan, the listing remains contingent on approval from authorities in Beijing because most of the company’s staff and manufacturing are in China.
If the IPO fails to materialise, Tang, a master of reinvention, could soon be plotting his next venture.
Additional reporting Jim Pickard in London and Ryan McMorrow in Beijing
