Early Life and Education
Li Lu’s early life was marked by upheaval, and such extreme circumstances forged his tenacity and his deep thinking on “modernization.”
Birth and survival: Li Lu was born in 1966 in Tangshan, Hebei Province, China. He was a survivor of the devastating 1976 Tangshan earthquake that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, an experience that made him aware of life’s fragility from an early age. Because his parents were sent to the countryside for re-education during the Cultural Revolution, he spent much of his childhood in foster care and instability.
Education and twists of fate: He enrolled at Nanjing University, initially studying physics, before switching to economics. In 1989, he was compelled to leave China because of his involvement in the student movement, first going to France and later arriving in the United States.
The Columbia legend: When he reached the U.S., he barely spoke English. Yet through remarkable perseverance, he gained admission to Columbia University. In just six years (1990–1996), he simultaneously earned three degrees — a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, a Juris Doctor, and an MBA — becoming the first Columbia student to hold all three at once.
The Buffett awakening: Still a Columbia student in 1993, Li Lu attended a lecture by Warren Buffett. That talk transformed his life, as he realized that “stocks are not merely pieces of paper, but ownership in businesses,” and it set him on the path of value investing.
Investment Career
Li Lu’s investing career is a classic shift from speculation to investment, and he was one of the earliest practitioners to bring value-investing ideas to China.
Founding Himalaya: In 1997, he founded Himalaya Capital. Originally run as a typical hedge fund, it suffered heavy losses during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. That failure pushed him to abandon short-selling and high-frequency trading entirely, leading him to fully embrace Buffett-style long-term value investing.
Munger’s trust: In 2003, Li Lu met Charlie Munger at a Thanksgiving lunch. They got along famously from the start. Munger became his mentor, and later entrusted a portion of his family’s money (roughly $88 million) to Li Lu to manage. Li Lu lived up to that trust, multiplying the capital several times. Munger once said publicly, “Li Lu is the only outside money manager I’ve ever hired in my life.”
The masterstroke: BYD: In 2002, Li Lu had the foresight to invest in a then-underappreciated Chinese battery company, BYD. In 2008, he recommended BYD to Munger and Buffett, leading to Berkshire Hathaway’s famous investment in the company. That move earned Berkshire many times its investment and cemented Li Lu’s standing in the investment world.
Current portfolio approach: Himalaya Capital now manages tens of billions of dollars with an extremely concentrated, long-term-hold style. According to recent SEC 13F filings (disclosed through 2024–2025), its U.S. equity holdings are focused on only a handful of names, typically including Alphabet (Google), Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, East West Bancorp, and PDD Holdings. This illustrates his philosophy of “betting heavily when conviction is high.”
Investment Philosophy
Li Lu’s thinking is an evolution of Buffett’s ideas, augmented by a sweeping perspective on human civilization.
Intellectual honesty: This is the quality Li Lu most emphasizes. He believes investors must be clear about what they know and what they don’t — the very core of the “circle of competence.”
Treating stocks as business ownership: He insists that if you aren’t prepared to hold a company for five or ten years, you should not buy it at all. As he once put it, “I manage my clients’ money as if it were my parents’ hard-earned lifetime savings.”
Civilization 3.0 and modernization: Li Lu has put forward a unique “civilization stage” theory. He sees humanity as having passed through hunting-gathering (1.0) and agrarian civilization (2.0), now living in a scientific-technological civilization (3.0). In the 3.0 era, the source of wealth creation is “technology plus free markets.” Hence he tends to invest in monopoly-like enterprises that drive or benefit from modern technological progress (e.g., Google, BYD).
Value investing from a China perspective: He strongly believes value investing works just as well in China. He argues that China is in a critical transition from Civilization 2.0 to 3.0, with enormous potential for domestic consumption growth (this is the logic behind his investments in PDD Holdings and BYD).
Personal Life
Li Lu keeps an exceptionally low public profile, rarely revealing personal details in the media, yet he is highly active in philanthropy and education.
Family: Li Lu is married with children and resides in Seattle and California. He fiercely protects his family’s privacy and seldom discusses specifics in public.
Philanthropy and social responsibility:
The Asian American Foundation (TAAF): In 2021, amid a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, Li Lu co-founded TAAF together with Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and others, pledging substantial donations to elevate the standing and rights of Asian Americans.
Pandemic relief: At the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, he moved quickly, donating supplies to Wuhan, China, and later providing significant support to frontline efforts in the United States, demonstrating a humanitarian spirit that transcends borders.
Education contributions: He serves as a trustee of both Columbia University and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and has long supported educational programs at his alma maters.
Books and Writings
Li Lu’s book is as much a sociological study as it is an investment guide.
Signature work: Civilization, Modernization, Value Investing and China (文明、现代化、价值投资与中国)
Publication year: 2020 (CITIC Press).
Content: The book is divided into two parts. The first half presents his macro-level reflections on the course of human civilization (the “Civilization 3.0” theory); the second half gathers his practical summaries of value investing and a collection of lectures. In investment circles, it is regarded as a classic that bridges macro-history and micro-investing.
Important preface: He wrote a well-known extended preface for the Chinese edition of Charlie Munger’s Poor Charlie’s Almanack, warmly recounting his mentor-student friendship with Munger.
