Profile

Loo Chooi Ting is an influential Malaysian Chinese businesswoman and prominent sponsor of high-profile initiatives related to Buddhism in Malaysia, India, and Bhutan carried out in the service of Chinese soft power. Specifically, she is Executive Vice President of the “Hai Tao Life Foundation”, the Malaysian franchise of “LifeTV”, a media enterprise founded by the Beijing-accredited Buddhist “televangelist” Hai Tao.

Her formal title is Datin Sri Loo Chooi Ting. “Datin Sri” is an honorific given to the wife of a recipient of “Datuk Sri”, the most senior state title conferred to those who have contributed highly to the nation of Malaysia. This is due to her marriage to the Malaysian timber tycoon Wong Yeon Chai (b.1961), whose full honorific is Datuk Sri Wong Yeon Chai (拿督斯里黄敏财). Together, the couple own and control numerous international businesses, several of which came to light in the offshore leaks “Panama Papers” scandal of 2016.

Wong, the son of millionaire Wong Tuck Kong who had made his fortune building rural roads for the Malaysian government, is known by the nickname “Tengku Wong” because of his close association with the royal family in the state of Pahang (“Tengku” being roughly equivalent to “Prince”). Wong received his Datukship from the Sultan of Pahang, Ahmad Shah, in 1990 aged 29, making him one of the youngest holders of the honour.

Wong gained notoriety in the 1990s as the “king of illegal timber in peninsular Malaysia”. Malaysia’s deforestation rate through unsustainable and illegal logging practices has accelerated faster than in any other tropical country. Environmentalists have raised the alarm over the vast amount of carbon released into the atmosphere through the scale of the activity. In Pahang during the 1980s and 1990s there was a gold-rush like scramble for logging concessions. Forest exploitation facilitated by personal and political influence was rife, and the involvement of the Sultans in the timber business was a source of Federal-State tension. In 1992 the Pahang State government, under pressure from the royal family, assigned logging concessions to the Sultan. Wong was the Sultan’s business partner, and was alleged to have acquired highly lucrative logging contracts on concessions given to the royal family. He was accused of using his influence with the Sultan to flout regulations and intimidate forest officers who refused to turn a blind eye to the illegal felling.

Malaysia’s Minister of Primary Industries exposed Wong for stopping timber seizures by the authorities and engaging in illegal logging in the name of the royal family. Wong filed a defamation suit against the minister and swiftly left the country. The controversy was a contributory factor in the 1993 amendments to Malaysia’s constitution which removed the legal immunity of the royalty. Wong avoided prosecution and in 2000 was awarded a further honour by the Sultan.

The fabulous wealth accumulated by the couple has allowed them to facilitate the careers and projects of a number of key Buddhist figures, both in the Han and Himalayan cultural spheres. Wong Yeon Chai is said to own three private aircraft, which have been used by Hai Tao for his travels around South East Asia. Through their largesse, Loo Chooi Ting and Wong Yeon Chai have become major overseas players in China’s deployment of Buddhism as soft power. Their support for Hai Tao in funding the construction of a gargantuan religious monument of Bhutan's most revered cultural icon has accomplished in the Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom what formal diplomatic channels had so far failed to elicit: a favourable shift in perception towards the Chinese. This initiative opened the door for Hai Tao to the very highest levels of Bhutan’s ruling establishment, a channel of influence he and his team took full advantage of.

The couple also became key sponsors of the projects of leading China-accredited Tibetan figurehead Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. For example in 2011 they took their places directly at his side for the inauguration of an extensive installation of large bas-relief stone sculptures covering around 20% of the inner walls of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya, the holiest Buddhist pilgrimage site in India. There, in the shade of the famous Bodhi Tree where the Buddha attained nirvana, and posing next to Malaysia’s “king of illegal timber”, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, known as an ardent environmentalist, remained unperturbed.

Network Links

• Life Foundation and LifeTV
  • Hai Tao
  • Chaun Xi
• Kagyu Monlam Limited
  • Karma Chodrak
• Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje
• Ngodup Palzom
• Khenpo Karpo