Ren Jianxin worked as a farmer in Dunhuang County, Gansu Province, during China’s Cultural Revolution. The hard life there, Ren explains, taught him “how to persistently pursue my goals,” along with other important lessons that have carried over into his business career.

In 1984, Ren borrowed money from his employer by using personal assets as collateral and, with seven colleagues, founded China BlueStar Chemical Cleaning, China’s first industrial-cleaning company. It started modestly by cleaning teapots and boilers but grew quickly and undertook increasingly difficult jobs. On the way to capturing 90 percent of the domestic industrial-cleaning market, BlueStar pushed its Japanese and German competitors out of China. Today, it claims to be the world’s biggest industrial-cleaning company.

Since 1990, Ren has acquired more than 100 state-owned enterprises. Above all, he brokered the 2004 merger between BlueStar and other companies affiliated with the former Ministry of Chemical Industry—a merger that created the China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina), the nation’s largest chemical conglomerate, of which he is now president. In 2006, Ren began a global-expansion program, buying assets in France and Australia. A year later, BlueStar came under the international business spotlight when it received a $600 million investment from the prominent...