With China’s economy now the second-largest in the world, Chinese companies and their entrepreneurial founders have started to get a lot more global attention. While middle-aged founders such as Jack Ma and Pony Ma won fame from the success of their tech conglomerates, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., the older generation, whose representatives pioneered entrepreneurship as early as the 1980s, are less well-known in the West. And yet, they are arguably much more influential examples of Chinese business figures.