背景资料：

10月11日，《观澜湖2006胡润百富榜》在上海揭晓，相关内容刊登在《胡润百富》杂志上。

49岁的张茵拥有财富270亿元，成为中国第一位女首富，也是世界上最富有的女白手起家者。

今年49岁的张茵，出身于军人家庭，祖籍山东，生在东北，幼时家境清贫，是家里八个子女中的老大。她很晚才有机会进入大学深造，之后在深圳一家企业工作。

完成学业后，她在工厂做过工业会计，并在深圳信托下属的一个合资企业里担任财务工作，之后在一家香港贸易公司做包装纸的业务。

安稳的工作并没有阻碍她不安分的天性。1985年，张茵只身带了3万元到香港开始废纸回收贸易。

这次创业，“无意中”抓住了上世纪80年代中国造纸原料市场的空白。此后的6年中，她在广东东莞建立了自己的独资工厂———东莞中南纸业有限公司，主要生产生活用纸，产品遍及全国各地，并在国内广泛投资造纸。

在完成了初步的资本积累之后，1990年，张茵与丈夫刘名中做出决定，把事业迁往世界最大的原材料市场美国，在那里建立了美国中南公司，为其在中国的工厂购买并提供可回收废纸。

此后10年间，张茵成立的美国中南有限公司先后建起了7家打包厂和运输企业，成为真正的“废纸回收大王”。

目前中南控股已是全球最大纸原料出口商，年出口超过500万吨，并以年均30%的速度递增，业务遍及美国、欧洲、亚洲等，在美国各行业的出口货柜数量排名中位列第一。

As night falls on the town of Mayong in south China's Guangdong Province, container trucks emblazoned with the logo "Nine Dragons Paper", a local household name, take to the streets.

Long after most people have gone home for the night the Nine Dragons Paper factory is still ablaze with lights.

"We run around the clock. I've never seen a slack period since I worked here," says a company manager, adding that orders had already piled up into December for the firm's packaging products, which are used by companies like Coca Cola, Nike, Sony, Haier and TCL.

Waste paper is the foundation of the wealth of Zhang Yin, the 49-year-old owner of the factory and its sister plant in the eastern Jiangsu Province.

The first woman to top the Huran Report rich list in China, she has amassed an estimated fortune of 27 billion yuan (3.4 billion U.S. dollars) by recycling scrap paper imported from the United States.

And topping the rich list has made her even richer. The share price of her company jumped 2.77 percent on the good news, adding another 1.1 billion yuan to her assets.

Wealthier than US television host Oprah Winfrey and author of the Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling, Zhang is described by acquaintances as a "round-faced, not very tall" woman who "doesn't like dressing up and looks like a person of action".

Over the years, Zhang's low profile has helped her remain largely unknown.

"I'm an entrepreneur. A high profile is unnecessary," Zhang was quoted as saying by the Shanghai-based China Business News, whose reporter described her speaking as "extremely fast".

"This title is just a calculation, not a big thing for me," Zhang Yin told a Xinhua reporter last week. "But it's very important for my group. We have worked for 20 years to make the fortune."

The eldest of eight children in a poor soldier's family in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Zhang learnt independence at an early age by looking after her brothers and sisters.

She started her career in waste paper trading in Hong Kong with30,000 yuan in 1985 and has stuck with the paper industry since then.

Aspiring to be the "queen of waste paper", Zhang continued to build her realm in the United States by setting up the America Chung Namp, Inc. (ACN) in 1990.

The ACN, whose asset value was not calculated in the rich list, is reported to provides nearly 80 percent of the raw materials for the Nine Dragons Paper.

"The key to the success of Nine Dragons Paper is ensuring the long-term and steady purchase of high-quality waste paper in large quantities," said Zhang.

ACN took good care of that, ranking the largest U.S. exporter of raw materials for paper-making and the biggest container exporter among all US industries for the past five years in a row.

ACN's success came with the burgeoning Chinese paper-makers' reliance on imported scrap paper.

Since its beginnings in the 1990s, China's paper-making industry is growing faster than any other in the world with an output of 49.5 million tons in 2004, while 54.4 million tons of paper was consumed, both figures ranking the world's second highest.

However, domestic supplies are insufficient, as only 30 percent of China's scrap paper is recycled each year, compared with 70 percent in the United States.

Forced to buy foreign scrap, China imported 12 million tons of waste paper in 2005, nearly half of the world's waste paper available for export.

"With more advanced awareness of environmental protection, the United States, Japan and European countries have formed standard waste paper recycling systems," said Zhang Yin, explaining the geographical advantages of the ACN.

"Paper-making can't do without environmental protection," said Zhang. "That's the motto of the Nine Dragons Paper, which puts an average of two to three percent of each project's investment into preventing pollution and monitors its waste water discharges 24 hours a day."

Nine Dragons Paper was set up in Guangdong in 1995, when the Chinese market was dominated by imported wrapping paper.

"Foresight is the key," said Zhang. "While most domestic producers were using machines with a production capacity of less than 50,000 tons, our first machine had a capacity of 200,000 tons. We have higher goals."

Zhang's vision paid off after 10 years of efforts. By the end of 2005, the Nine Dragons had become China's largest container board maker and one of the world's largest in terms of production capacity, according to a report by the Resource Information Systems Inc., a major information body for the paper and timber industry.

In March, Nine Dragons went public in Hong Kong, with its share price jumping nearly 40 percent on the first trading day.

A half year later, the funds raised in the stock market had reduced the company's debt-capital ratio from 187 percent to 33 percent, and added as much as 24 billion yuan to Zhang's fortune, making her the wealthiest self-made woman in the world.

"My sister hates lazy people the most. She is always energetic and more diligent than any other person I know," says Zhang Yin's sister Zhang Xiubo. "We obey her unconditionally."

Five of Zhang's sisters and brothers as well as her husband help in the business, but Zhang denies kinship plays a key part in her management.

"Out of the whole family, only one brother has entered the company's management. I chose him for his ability," she said. "My husband used to be a doctor, but I discovered his talent and convinced him to do business. They have proved to do an excellent job."

A mother of two, she believes balancing career and family is the key to the success of a businesswoman.

Her achievements could encourage China's promotion of a resource-efficient society and a sustainable economy with 10 million tons of scrap paper yet to be recycled each year.

However, those who want to become next Zhang Yin are challenged by the country's lack of a professional paper recycling system, with most of it buried or burned without being sorted from other garbage.

Li Jianhua, a national legislator, proposed to the National People's Congress in March that China should make laws to improve its waste paper recycling system by establishing special recycling agencies and enacting unified standards for sorting waste paper.

"The recycling of paper is the way to solve the raw materials shortage that is the bottleneck of China's paper-making industry, and a requirement for building a resource-efficient society," said Li.

Until then, Zhang Yin is likely to retain her crown as the "queen of waste paper".