But it has made Cheung Yan -- chairwoman of Nine Dragons Paper, China's largest paperboard producer -- richer than both Oprah Winfrey and JK Rowling, worth an estimated 2.4 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.

Cheung, who became the first woman last year to top the annual rich list compiled by Hunrun Report, can afford anything she wants, but insists she only wears designer brands because of her position.

"If I was a housewife, I would buy clothes from Wal-Mart. The quality there is good. But I'm a career woman, so I have to dress to look like one," Cheung told AFP, the sizeable diamonds on her finger, wrist and ears sparkling.

Her company's performance has a similar lustre.

Nine Dragons, formed only 12 years ago, this week reported a profit of 270 million US dollars in the year to June 2007, a 19-fold increase from 2003. Its clients now include Coca-Cola, Nike and Sony.

"I was only in my 20s when I got into the business. Waste paper was considered dirty by most people. I myself didn't like it very much and didn't really accept it," she told AFP in an interview in her plush Hong Kong office.

Cheung discovered the potential of the business while working for a paper products company in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in the 1980s when the booming Chinese export trade was hungry for boxes in which to ship their goods.

China's own paper products were then of a poor quality and very few companies knew the benefits of recycling waste paper.

"In my eyes, waste papers are like resources, like a forest," the 50-year-old said.

With just 4,000 US dollars in savings, she arrived in Hong Kong in 1985 and set up a company importing waste paper. Reports have said she had to fight off both cheating business partners and intimidation from gangsters to build up her wealth.

But the small scale of the market in the city was limited, prompting her and her husband, a Taiwan-born Brazilian national who had trained as a dentist, to go to Los Angeles to open a recycling firm that would ship its output to China.

The little English she knew did not deter her ambition.

"Language did not create a barrier. Even if you knew English, if you had the wrong ideas, it wouldn't have worked," she said.

"The (Americans) are direct and I'm the same. We don't talk a lot of nonsense," Cheung said, adding her candid personality is the legacy of her "too honest" father.

He was a military officer jailed for three years for being a capitalist during China's Cultural Revolution, a far cry from the success of the eldest of his eight children.

In person, the petite tycoon is energetic, open and frank. Cheung greets questions with a big smile and plenty of hearty laughs and hand gestures -- a warmth she says stems from her career success, not her vast wealth.

"I'm not the type of person who gets very happy for making a lot of money," she said. "Because my business is developing, I always need a lot of money. So however much I make, I always feel that I don't have enough."

Much is made of her status as a successful woman in China, where traditionally a woman is expected to be a subservient wife, but gender inequality has never been a concern for Cheung.

"You have to be confident. You think you are small, you are a female? You can't think like that, you can't put yourself down," she said.

"Women actually have higher standing than men. We have International Women's Day and just take a look at Mother's Day -- how much importance do people pay to mothers?" said the billionaire.

"Traditional Chinese women have to think about their husbands, children, their kids' schooling, what they eat and what they wear. That's what women have to do no matter how successful they are.

"For men, they can focus on their career -- they are not as dedicated as women at home. I think this is unfair," said Cheung, who is a member of China's top political advisory body.

Cheung tries to speak to her two sons who live in the US every day, as she juggles her busy work schedule that often allows only five hours of sleep a night.

Her older son, 24-year-old Lau Chun-shun, is already a non-executive director of Nine Dragons, but she insists the question of whether her children would inherit her business empire would largely depend on their ability.

"They would have to work very hard for it," she said.

Despite its strong figures and growth, Cheung insists Nine Dragons is "not very successful."

"Nine Dragons is still moving. It has only achieved its first step of success," she said, adding her aim was to build the company to be the world's largest-packaging paperboard maker in three years.

"There is a lot of potential in this market. A lot of things are waiting for us to do because the company is still developing. A person cannot stop here. Time is precious," she added.

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