Fifty years after he reached Java's shores from China in 1938 with barely more than the clothes he wore, Liem Sioe Liong was boss of Indonesia's biggest conglomerate and was showing up in magazine lists of the world's wealthiest people. This reflected how much the Salim Group he founded flourished during the long presidency of his friend and patron, General Suharto. At the height of his success, Liem sat atop a vast business empire, estimated by some to encompass 600 affiliated companies — Liem said he didn't know the exact number — and was a force in many strategic industries, including wheat-milling, cement-making and banking.

In the mid-1990s, more than 200,000 people worked for Salim companies in Indonesia and overseas. In 1996, the year before the Asian financial crisis hit Salim — and Indonesia — hard, revenue from group operations was estimated at US$22 billion, nearly three times as large as the second-ranked group, Astra. Liem noted in a Salim corporate profile published that year — the last one issued: “Today, our companies are intimately involved in the day to day lives of literally millions of Indonesian families.” Liem's Bank Central Asia grew to become the country's biggest private bank. Indocement, an agglomeration of Salim's cement plants, became Indonesia's dominant cement producer; Bogasari, its flour processing unit, expanded a Jakarta plant into the world's largest mill; and Indofood overtook Nissin Foods of Japan as the world's leading instant noodle manufacturer.

Liem himself didn't like to dwell on indicators of wealth — he was uncomfortable with portrayals of himself as the richest businessman in Southeast Asia (but he didn't object to rankings issued by the Finance Ministry showing him as the No. 1 taxpayer in Indonesia, as he wanted it be known that he paid his dues). In a country where the Chinese have historically been subjected to discrimination and periodic violence, the tycoon understandably preferred to keep a low profile. Liem liked to quote a Chinese proverb: “Tall trees attract the wind. We don't want to talk about how big we are; people get jealous.” Until a foreign journalist for the Associated Press mentioned Liem's Salim Group in 1971, very few people outside the country had heard of the man who became Suharto's most important business pillar.