Tsao’s business philosophy was forged amid war and civil unrest, and the narrative of his early business life in Shanghai and Hong Kong would not look out of place in a bestselling novel.

“As far back as I can remember, Chinese society has almost always been in a state of instability and chaos,” Tsao wrote in his surprisingly candid autobiography, My Sixty Years – Turbulent Sailing, published by IMC in 2009.

It was bullets, bombs and tanks, not tear gas, that threatened the Tsao family business after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. This was followed by World War II in Asia and then the Chinese civil war. Some of his former colleagues suspect it was this early turbulent experience that shaped his approach to business and life.

“I think that many of his characteristics were founded on what he went through in his early life,” says Tim Huxley, CEO of Mandarin Shipping. Huxley was Tsao’s vice-chairman when Tsao was chairman of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association, which he was instrumental in establishing in 1957.

“While he was a generous philanthropist, he was very frugal and humble and eschewed many of the trappings of the shipping tycoon – ‘running a tight ship’ was a mantra he lived by,” says Huxley.

Tsao’s family were seafarers from Pudong, living on the banks of the Huang Po river in what is now the metropolis of Shanghai. His grandfather was a self-made man who successfully built a sea transport business and, by the time of Tsao’s birth in 1925, the family was very comfortably off. His well-educated father was part of the Shanghai business elite and later founded the National Industrial Bank of China.

This comfortable existence was upset by war. The family’s fleet of lorries and ships was confiscated by Japanese forces and after Japan’s occupation of Shanghai’s foreign concessions in 1941, Tsao vividly remembered having no coal for heating or for a hot bath during the bitter Shanghai winters. By the end of war in 1945, the Chinese economy was suffering 100 per cent inflation and valueless currencies were issued as the ephemeral peace soon turned into the bitter civil war fought between Nationalists and Communists.

As economic and social conditions deteriorated, the 22-year-old Tsao sold all his mother’s assets and deposited the funds into a Hong Kong bank via Guangzhou. This would become the family’s US$100,000 financial lifeline in Hong Kong, but it represented only a tiny fraction of the family’s hard-earned business assets.

Tsao joined his family in Hong Kong for good in 1949, leaving the head office open in Shanghai and intending to return as soon as the post-civil-war disruption settled down. He did not return to China for some 40 years.

On one floor of a building on a corner of Wyndham Street, his family of eight also found room for employees and friends who fled China during the same period. “About 30 of us squeezed into the house,” Tsao told the Post in a 2003 interview.

The military conflict and political turmoil in 1940s China forced him to reinvent the family business in Hong Kong at the age of 24. He established a shipping operation with a single ancient steamer running Taiwanese blockades at the request of the nascent government of communist China.

The ship was very old, there were no modern communications and the weather could be treacherous during the three-month round-trip from Hong Kong to Rock Island in Shandong province, to Japan, and back to Hong Kong.

After the Korean war (1950-53), having been encouraged by China to bypass the United Nations trade embargo, Tsao was instructed to send his profits to the Chinese government and the manager of his Tianjin office was held at gunpoint by PLA soldiers.

During this period, Tsao also developed an antipathy and distrust for Western business influence in Hong Kong, after approaching HSBC for funds to purchase a new ship. “In the process of applying for a loan, I had to endure all kinds of humiliation from these expatriates,” wrote Tsao.

It must have been intolerable for an industrious economics graduate and the son of a once prosperous Shanghai bank owner to be patronised and told he was not worthy of bank credit. “Even today it still disturbs me when I recollect their arrogant attitude and their superiority complex,” wrote Tsao.

Anthony Hardy, the former head of the Wallem Group and chairman emeritus of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, knew Tsao for 55 years. He says Tsao resented that Chinese shipowners were not permitted to deal directly with international banks but were forced to deal via Western shipping companies.

They first met in the early 1960s when Hardy was a junior ship broker. Much later, the duo worked together during the founding of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, which opened in September 2005, with the financial support of Tsao and other key members of the local shipping industry.

“He was not easy to get close to,” says Hardy. “He was reserved, and from what he told me later he had a bad experience with UK shipping companies. So he was a bit wary of foreign broking companies.”

Tsao’s ability to withstand civil unrest continued after his relocation to Hong Kong. In October 1956, after violent riots and street fighting between former Nationalist soldiers and Communists in Kowloon, he moved his parents to Brazil for their safety. In 1967, during the extended periods of leftist riots and civil unrest in Hong Kong, he moved his two eldest children to the US for their education – a move he later professed to regret deeply.

Tsao adjusted his sails to suit the prevailing political weather but he never wasted his time attempting to change the wind direction. “I always kept politics at arm’s length,” he wrote.

In 1991, as anxiety in Hong Kong increased about the pending return of Hong Kong to China, Tsao caused a stir when he moved his entire shipping operation to Singapore.

Those turbulent days in Shanghai and Hong Kong made self-discipline, hard work and frugality the key to Tsao’s approach to life, and according to those that knew him, this approach could make “The Chairman” – as he was known – appear cold and remote.

“He was not really a team player. A brilliant man but something of a loner – certainly not a member of the Hong Kong shipowners’ clique,” says Hardy. Others who worked with him admit that while he made a huge contribution to Asian shipping, he could also be strong-willed and difficult to work with.

Hardy says that in the 55 years of their relationship, he never received an invitation to Tsao’s home.

“Today, what makes me feel proud and honoured are my family and children,” wrote Tsao. But of the 216 pages in his autobiography, fewer than six are devoted to his family, and there is a notable absence of affectionate anecdotes about his four children. Tsao’s family declined a request for an interview or comment.

It is highly unlikely that Tsao would have allowed the current civil unrest in Hong Kong to dent the stability of his business empire. His Hong Kong office was said to be spartan and devoid of any personal mementos, except for one small notice he kept on his desk, which read: “Greed is the source of failure.”