Lee Shau-kee, a Hong Kong real estate tycoon who made his immense fortune building tens of thousands of apartments for middle-class descendants of refugees who had fled Communist mainland China, died on Monday. He was 97.

香港房地产大亨李兆基于周一去世，享年97岁。他为逃离共产党统治的中国大陆难民的中产阶级后代建造了数万套公寓，从而积累了巨额财富。

His death was announced by the company he founded, Henderson Land Development. It did not say where he died or cite a cause.

他创立的恒基兆业地产有限公司宣布了他的死讯。声明没有说明他去世时身在何处，也没有解释死因。

Well into his 70s, Mr. Lee became even wealthier through shrewd financial investments that prompted some to call him Hong Kong’s Warren Buffett. At his death, Forbes magazine estimated his worth at $29.2 billion, making him the 63rd wealthiest person in the world.

步入古稀之年后的李兆基通过精明的金融投资变得更加富有，一些人因此称他为香港的沃伦·巴菲特。在他去世时，《福布斯》杂志估计他的身价为292亿美元，使他在世界富人榜上排名第63位。

Mr. Lee founded Henderson Land Development in 1976. By the time he stepped down as its chairman and managing director in 2019 at age 91, the company had grown to 10,000 employees and spread beyond real estate development into hotels, department stores and natural gas distribution.

李兆基于1976年创立恒基兆业。2019年91岁的他辞去董事局主席兼董事总经理职务时，该公司已拥有1万名员工，业务范围也从房地产开发扩展到酒店、百货商店和天然气分销。

He started his career as a gold and currency dealer, reinvesting his profits in real estate. Most speculators and developers preferred higher-priced plots on the island of Hong Kong. But Mr. Lee was certain that the rising tide of hardworking, upwardly mobile refugees from the mainland and their descendants would send property prices soaring. He took a chance, buying up large chunks of cheap agricultural land in the New Territories bordering the mainland.

他的职业生涯始于黄金和货币交易商，后将利润再投资于房地产。大多数投机者和开发商更喜欢香港岛价格较高的地块。但李兆基确信，来自大陆的勤劳、上进的难民及其后代将使房地产价格飙升。他抓住机会，在与大陆接壤的新界购买了大片廉价的农地。

2015年，李兆基与计划建造的公寓楼模型合影。他就住在他的公司建造的一栋大楼之一。

His business strategy, he said, was based on trends indicating that wages were rising far faster than property prices, putting apartments within reach of hundreds of thousands of buyers and renters. In the 1970s and ’80s, Henderson Land Development erected the new town of Sha Tin, which became home to more than a half-million people.

他说，他的商业策略是基于这样一种趋势：工资的上涨速度远远快于房价的上涨速度，这使得数十万购房者和租房者都能买得起公寓。上世纪七八十年代，恒基兆业在沙田新建了一个小镇，成为50多万人的家园。

“Young couples were choosing to live in their own homes instead of with their parents as they had done traditionally,” Mr. Lee told his official biographer, Leung Fung-yee.

李兆基对他的官方传记作者梁凤仪说，“年轻夫妇都选择住在自己家里，不像传统那样和父母同住。”

Mr. Lee himself lived in one of the nondescript residential towers that his company built throughout Hong Kong and liked to spend his leisure time golfing with fellow magnates.

李兆基本人住在他的公司在香港各地建造的诸多外观平凡的住宅大厦中的一座里，闲暇时喜欢和其他大亨一起打高尔夫球。

As his real estate business grew, Mr. Lee staffed his management with relatives, including his children and nieces and nephews. At least 10 of them held senior positions; two sons, Peter and Martin, became joint chairmen in 2019.

随着房地产业务的发展壮大，李兆基让大量亲属进入管理层，包括他的子女和侄子侄女。其中至少10人担任高级职务；他的儿子李家杰和李家诚于2019年成为联席主席。

Mr. Lee channeled most of his philanthropy through the Lee Shau-Kee Foundation, funding buildings and scholarships at universities in Hong Kong, China and other countries. The foundation also financed vocational training for farmers and rural doctors in mainland China.

李兆基的大部分慈善事业都是通过李兆基基金进行的，为香港、中国和其他国家的大学提供建筑资金和奖学金。该基金会还资助了中国大陆农民和乡村医生的职业培训。

Mr. Lee once considered making major investments abroad, he said, but decided in the end to stay on the island. “Elsewhere the taxes are too high,” he told Forbes in 1997, noting that in 1996, he collected $340 million in tax-free dividends, plowing most of this windfall back into his real estate ventures. “You couldn’t snowball your profits.”

他说，自己曾经考虑在海外进行大规模投资，但最终决定留在香港。“其他地方税收太高了，”他在1997年告诉《福布斯》，并指出，他在1996年获得了3.4亿美元的免税股息，并将这笔意外之财中的大部分投入了他的房地产企业。“利润不可能像滚雪球一样增加。”

Lee Shau-kee was born on Jan. 29, 1928, in Shunde, on the outskirts of Guangzhou, then known as Canton, in southern China, to Lee Gai-fu and Chan Luan-fung. His father, a well-to-do currency trader, sent him to Hong Kong in 1948 when Mao Zedong’s Communists were about to triumph over Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in China’s civil war.

李兆基于1928年1月29日出生在中国南方广州附近的顺德县，父亲是李介甫，母亲是陈鸾凤。他的父亲是一位富裕的外汇交易商，1948年，当毛泽东领导的共产党即将在内战中战胜蒋介石领导的国民党时，他被父亲送到了香港。

As a teenager, Mr. Lee became a gold trader, first with his father and then on his own. As an adult, he decided to move to Hong Kong and embark on real estate development. He co-founded Sun Hung Kai Properties with two other partners in 1963 and started Henderson Land Development on his own 13 years later.

李兆基十几岁就开始从事黄金交易，先是跟着父亲，然后自立门户。成年后，他决定转到香港，从事房地产开发。1963年，他与另外两名合伙人共同创立了新鸿基地产，13年后，他又创立了恒基兆业。

Henderson became a publicly traded company in 1981, though a majority of its shares were owned by Lee family members.

1981年，恒基兆业成为上市公司，但大部分股份由李氏家族成员持有。

Mr. Lee had occasional business fallouts with his relatives, most notably with his wife of 15 years, Lau Wai-kuen, whom he divorced in 1981. “I will not marry again because I’m afraid any woman would only see my money,” he told his biographer.

李兆基偶尔会与亲戚在生意上发生争执，其中最著名的是他与结婚15年的妻子刘惠娟的关系。两人于1981年离婚。“我不会再结婚了，因为我害怕女人只图我的钱，”他告诉他的传记作者。

His survivors include his two sons, three daughters and his sister, Fung Lee Woon King, an executive director at Henderson Land Development.

他的遗属包括他的两个儿子，三个女儿和他的妹妹——恒基兆业发展有限公司的执行董事冯李焕琼。

李兆基和他的两个儿子，左为李家杰，右为李家诚，他们在父亲于2019年退休后接管了恒基兆业。

Toward the end of the 20th century, economic and political trends undermined the Hong Kong real estate market that had propelled Mr. Lee into the ranks of the world’s richest people. With China embracing capitalist reforms, foreign investors rushed to set up factories and offices on the mainland, and Shanghai challenged Hong Kong as Asia’s pre-eminent financial capital. And with the end of British colonial rule in Hong Kong and its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the island-city lost some of its aura of a freewheeling business center. With fewer corporations setting up offices in Hong Kong, the local property market stagnated.

在20世纪末，经济和政治趋势削弱了香港的房地产市场，当初正是这个市场让李兆基得以跻身世界顶级富豪之列。随着中国接受资本主义改革，外国投资者纷纷在大陆设立工厂和办事处，上海挑战了香港作为亚洲卓越金融之都的地位。1997年，英国在香港的殖民统治结束，香港回归中国，这座岛屿城市失去了一些自由商业中心的光环。随着在香港设立办事处的公司越来越少，当地房地产市场停滞不前。

Mr. Lee’s critics predicted his empire’s decline, citing it as a cautionary tale about the perils facing a business that had outgrown its traditional, family-run organization.

李兆基的批评者预言他的帝国会衰落，称这是一个警示故事，告诉人们，一个企业的规模超越传统的家族式经营时，就会面临种种危险。

“Lee Shau-kee is typical of the post-World War II generation of Chinese entrepreneurs in Asia,” the Far Eastern Economic Review said in a long profile of him in 2001. Despite building a profitable empire in the midst of turmoil, the magazine wrote, Mr. Lee “has had difficulties preparing it for a new generation and a new business environment.”

2001年，《远东经济评论》在一篇有关李兆基的长篇报道中称：“李兆基是二战后亚洲一代华人企业家的典型代表。”该杂志写道，尽管李兆基在动荡中建立了一个盈利的帝国，但他“很难为新一代和新的商业环境做好准备”。

He proved such doomsayers wrong with profitable investments in financial stocks, derivatives and new ventures such as paper manufacturing. His touch was so sure that he tried to hide his investment plans from speculators trying to follow his every move.

李兆基对金融股票、衍生品和造纸业等新企业的投资盈利丰厚，证明了这些悲观论者的错误。他的行动非常有把握，以至于他努力隐藏自己的投资计划，不想让那些试图跟随他一举一动的投机者知道。

At the same time, Mr. Lee was growing increasingly impatient with his heirs. In 1998, he told Hong Kong journalists that after a decade of tutelage in the family business, his oldest son, Peter, was not ready to succeed him. “He gets only a passing grade now,” Mr. Lee said.

与此同时，李兆基对他的继承人显得越来越不耐烦了。1998年，他对香港记者说，在家族企业里接受了10年的指导后，他的大儿子李家杰还没有准备好接替他。“他现在只能打一个及格的分数，”李兆基说。

At the time, investors and financial analysts were even less impressed by another son, Martin, who had to overcome a youthful passion for sports cars and nightlife.

当时，投资者和金融分析师对他的另一个儿子李家诚评价更低，后者不得不克制一个年轻人对跑车和夜生活的热情。

But they regained his confidence over the years, and took control of the company after Mr. Lee stepped down.

但是，这些年来他们重新获得了他的信任，在李兆基卸任后接管了公司。

For their part, Mr. Lee’s sons professed loyalty to their father and urged him to retain leadership of the family business as long as possible. “I will be the first one to ask him not to retire,” Peter Lee told The South China Morning Post in 2001.

李兆基的儿子们则表示忠于父亲，吁请他尽可能长时间地保留对家族企业的领导权。李家杰在2001年告诉《南华早报》：“我会是第一个要求他不要退休的人。”

The sentiment was in keeping with Mr. Lee’s own strong sense of filial piety. In 1996, he built a four-story mausoleum, topped with a tower embedded with semiprecious stones, on an acre in his family’s ancestral village of Daliang, in the southern Pearl River Delta. He buried his parents there.

这种情绪与李兆基本人强烈的孝道意识是一致的。1996年，他在珠江三角洲南部的祖籍大良镇建造了一座四层楼高、占地约40亩的陵墓，顶部有一座镶嵌着半宝石的塔。他把父母安葬在那里。