It is -- and this is putting it mildly -- sometimes difficult to generalize about a nation of 1.3 billion people. But let's go out on a limb and say there aren't many who would quibble with the description of China as money-obsessed. This is a nation in which arguably the most important phrase ever attributed to its transformational leader, Deng Xiaoping, was "to get rich is glorious." In China they call Warren Buffett the "god of stocks," and whenever he visits, the Chinese media cover his every move and utterance. There have been over 40 books about Warren Buffett translated into Chinese.
Which makes it very interesting that Peter Buffett, Warren's unassuming 53-year-old son, has recently become a rising star in China in his own right. And it's not because everyone thinks Warren's investment acumen has been handed down via DNA. Peter Buffett is a successful musician and a composer, writing scores for television and film (the Dances With Wolves soundtrack is one of his prominent credits) and performing his New Agey music in concert. He played most recently in August at Beijing Tanglewood, a gorgeous new outdoor concert space in the shadow of the Great Wall.
But Beijing isn't exactly Marin County. In today's China, New Age music will take you only so far. The reason Buffett has piqued the interest of a lot of Chinese -- students and young professionals in particular -- is that he has taken to dispensing life advice along with his music. And if part of his core message -- in essence, that money isn't everything -- seems rather counterintuitive in China these days, that's precisely the reason he has struck a chord. Warren Buffett's rock-star status tells us something about what China is today; Peter's success might tell us something about where it's going.
Earlier this year a publisher in Beijing decided to capitalize on the Chinese demand for all things Buffett and translate a book Peter had written in 2010, titled Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment. It sold modestly in the U.S. and was released in China in March. Carrying the Chinese title Be Yourself, by the end of August the book had sold 320,000 copies -- a huge number, even in a country of 1.3 billion. Through much of the spring and summer, says Zhang Haióu, editor-in-chief of New World Press, Buffett's Chinese publisher, they were selling 1,000 copies a day online. "We obviously had hoped for the best, but honestly, we were stunned," says Zhang.
Buffett did a four-city promotional tour this past spring in which, as he often does in the States, he paired his music with his message. ("Concert and Conversation," the events are called.) He did 25 press interviews with the electronic and print media -- national and local -- including a web chat on what, for students and young professionals, has become the most important media site of them all, Sina.com's microblog (the Chinese version of Twitter).
It was only his second visit to China. And though he was aware of his father's status in the country, he hadn't quite grasped the magnitude of it. Sitting in a Beijing hotel in August, a day before his Great Wall concert, Buffett says he was taken aback by the intensity of the reception. "It wasn't quite what I was expecting," he says, laughing. "It was like a presidential campaign or something. There were reporters everywhere."
You have to remember that while Peter Andrew Buffett may be the second son of the "god of stocks" and the late Susan Buffett -- his mother died in 2004 -- he is not used to the star treatment. Far from it, in fact. He and his wife, Jennifer, have a place in New York City but spend much of their time in quiet Ulster County, N.Y., 90 miles north of the city. (The couple have no children.) In addition to pursuing his music career, he, like his two older siblings, runs his own charitable foundation, which his father has funded generously with Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) stock. (His sister, Susie, still lives in Omaha and focuses on her philanthropic work; his brother, Howard, owns a farm in Decatur, Ill.) Above all, the key thing about Peter Buffett is that he appears to be absolutely and completely normal. It hardly seems possible, but there it is. Well-grounded, affable, nary a twitch of neurosis or insecurity about him. "Oh, yeah," he says, "I get that all the time. You're Warren Buffett's son, and you're soooo normal."
