A Quote by John Gokongwei

I'm from Cebu. I was one year old when I came here to Cebu from Fujian, south China. I'm Cebuano. I left for Manila when I was 22. — © John Gokongwei
I'm from Cebu. I was one year old when I came here to Cebu from Fujian, south China. I'm Cebuano. I left for Manila when I was 22.
I knew I could make it in Cebu, but I never thought I could make it in Manila.
SM Seaside City Cebu: soon to be the Philippines' Largest Mall and the 4th Largest in the World
I am hopeful that weightlifting will grow with more kids getting into the sport not just from Zamboanga City or Cebu but all over the Philippines who can become the next Hidilyn Diaz.
I've always wanted to be a businessman. No other ambitions - I just wanted to be in business, even when I was a child in Fujian province, south China.
The very first role I ever played was as a 17-year old South African girl who dreamed of being a star and left home to meet her mother in the big city so that she could pursue that dream. I left South Africa and met my mother in Vancouver and not long after that was given the opportunity to perform on the stage and have people chant my name.
In the South China Sea and underneath the South China Sea, of course, there's a lot of raw materials. There are very rich fishing grounds there, so there are some economic concerns in the South China Sea as well.
My 22-year-old [son] can see everything I've done, but my 15-year-old hasn't been able to see anything, at all. But yeah, I hope I'm a super cool dad.
I am not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it. I am one of the 22 million black victims of the Democrats, and one of the 22 million black victims of the Republicans, and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism... You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocracy... If you go to jail, so what? If you're black, you were born in jail. If you're black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you south of the Canadian border, you're south.
When I was 20, 21, 22 years old, I was making really good money for a 22-year-old, but it wasn't a huge pot. And of course I made a lot of mistakes. I'm glad I got to make those mistakes with a smaller pool of money and learn from it as opposed to learning the hard way with bigger amounts of money when there would be more consequences.
Well, we certainly need to raise the retirement age. I've told my 19-year-old and my 22-year-old that they're not going to be getting retirement benefits at age 62.
My mom was paralyzed from polio at the age of 2, abandoned by her husband, left with a 2-year-old, a 6-year-old and a 10-year-old, and so, we were raising her as much as she was raising us.
When I completed writing 'Soul Mountain,' I more or less closed the accounts with China for myself. I was 50 years old when I left, so China is already within me.
I have done business in China for 25 years, so I know that in order to get China to cooperate with us, we must first actually retaliate against their cyber-attacks so they know we're serious. We have to push back on their desire to control the trade route through the South China Sea through which flows $5 trillion worth of goods and services every year.
To be sure, China is nowhere as powerful as the U.S., but it has acquired the ability to impose its will on individual nations around the world. From Australia to Germany, South Africa to South Korea, political leaders are careful not to rub China the wrong way.
When I was in government, the South African economy was growing at 4.5% - 5%. But then came the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, and so the global economy shrunk. That hit South Africa very hard, because then the export markets shrunk, and that includes China, which has become one of the main trade partners with South Africa. Also, the slowdown in the Chinese economy affected South Africa. The result was that during that whole period, South Africa lost something like a million jobs because of external factors.
I think my shows can draw an audience of 12 million because I ask, 'What can make a 7-year-old, a 17-year-old, a 30-year-old and a 77-year-old laugh?'
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