In between his two successful business enterprises, Chu’s life was turbulent. His career as a star manager of a state-owned tobacco company ended in disgrace when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1999 for corruption. His wife and only daughter were also jailed, and his daughter died soon afterwards in prison.

He was released on medical parole in 2002 and began his second life as China’s best known orange grower.

A long list of Chinese entrepreneurs paid homage to Chu, remembering him for his management skills and his unyielding spirit.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, called Chu “an extraordinary man”.

“I respected him because I could see entrepreneurship in him,” Ma said.

Wang Jianlin, founder of property and entertainment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, called Chu “a great figure in China’s reform and opening up” movement.

The spirit of Chu “will motivate Chinese entrepreneurs one generation after another to struggle for China’s economic development”, Wang wrote in a eulogy.

Liu Chuanzhi, founder of computer giant Lenovo, wrote that “people like him … pushed the progress of society”, adding that he particularly admired Chu’s ability to “live in an optimistic and strong manner” after having endured great suffering.

Chu’s turbulent life, especially his journey from national hero to convicted criminal and back again, mirrored the aspirations and uncertainties of many Chinese tycoons who have struggled to prove their value in an environment where the lines between the state and private enterprise are often blurred.

While China’s gradual economic liberalisation has made many entrepreneurs incredibly rich by allowing them to showcase their business talents, they remain vulnerable in a state-dominated economic system where personal ambitions and abilities can be both a blessing and a curse.

Chu’s path to becoming China’s tobacco king started at age 51, when he became director of a loss-making cigarette factory in 1979 – the year China began to reform its centrally planned economy and test market mechanisms to improve efficiency and profitability.

While China’s tobacco industry was a state monopoly, competition among different state-owned factories was intense. Through hard work and good management, Chu turned the near-bankrupt Yuxi Tobacco Company – later renamed the Hongta Tobacco Group – into the most profitable state-owned tobacco firm in the country.

Zhang Chongqing, former executive director general of the China Enterprise Federation, knew Chu since the early 1980s. He said Chu had once “lived in a tobacco field for seven days and nights” to study the changes the leaves underwent in an effort to improve quality.

Chu’s efforts paid off. In its heyday, Hongta Group under his management became a pillar of the local economy in Yunnan province. At its peak, it contributed 60 per cent of the province’s fiscal revenues. In return, Chu was showered with a long list of honorary titles.

However, officially Chu was just another state employee and his pay remained largely the same as that of any ordinary worker.

“His salary in the early 1990s was about 3,000 yuan (US$450) a month … when his company was delivering 19.2 billion yuan (US$2.8 billion) a year [in profits and taxes] to the state,” Zhang said.

Chu started to misuse company funds, which belonged to the state, and to accept bribes from those eager to buy cigarettes from him – his group’s cigarettes were in such short supply that there was an active black market for them.

In 1996, he was placed under investigation, before being convicted of corruption in 1999. Although the evidence against him was made public, he received sympathy from many.

Zhang visited Chu in prison and said many cars were lined up outside. “He told me that many cigarette factory managers were waiting to see him as they all wanted his advice,” he said.

“He was working as a librarian in the prison … he showed the spirit of a great entrepreneur. He didn’t look sad or tired. He was still full of energy,” Zhang said.

With his personal assets confiscated and all honours revoked, Chu, at the age of 73, returned to his hometown after his release and started to plant orange trees on its barren hills.

Wang Shi, a founder of Chinese property developer Vanke, remembered Chu as “my role model, my older brother and my true friend”.

“I still remember the first time I met him. He wore a straw hat with an open-necked shirt, and was bargaining with a worker who was fixing a water pump,” he said.

The worker had asked for 80 yuan (US$11.92) for the job. Chu said he’d only pay 60,” Wang said, at his own birthday party talk show last year in Beijing. “I thought … here was the tobacco king who ran a 30 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion) business still trying to get a bargain over a water pump.”

Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based independent economist, said Chu’s personal tragedy was also a sad story about China’s state sector being inherently incompatible with personal entrepreneurship.

“The most important part of the market economy is entrepreneurship. However, the state economic system has prevented people from exercising their abilities to innovate,” Hu said.

Consumers were willing to pay extra for Chu’s oranges, Hu said, because people admired “his spirit of never giving up or admitting defeat”. The nonagenarian Chu actually “inspired many young Chinese to start up their own businesses,” he added.

Chu’s prison sentence officially ended in 2011, after several reductions in its length.

In December 2018, Chu was picked as an exemplary figure in a documentary celebrating the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up movement.

“I was confident about growing oranges – when we planted tobacco we were dealing with one hundred times the size of the orchard now – this is a piece of cake! My oranges sell well because costs are low and they taste great,” Chu said in the documentary, which was broadcast by CGTN, the international arm of state-owned media CCTV.