Hopewell Holdings
China's first 5-star hotel and the first involving foreign capital, the China Hotel was built in 1984 by the Hong Kong-listed conglomerate Hopewell Holdings Ltd (controlled by Sir Gordon Wu) under a novel contractual agreement that came to be known as Build-Operate-Transfer, a means of building and operating joint ventures with local authorities in China. This arrangement allowed a foreign partner to build a facility at its own expense, operated it for an agreed length of time to generate a return on its investment, then hand it over to a local partner at no cost. New World Development, via its subsidiary New World Hotels (Holdings), also owned a minority stake.