THE tycoon Henry Fok Ying-tung was affectionately known in Hong Kong as “the Godfather” for his political influence and close ties with Beijing. On the strength of business interests that ranged from property to ports and casinos, he was also called the “Patriotic Capitalist”.

Fok made his fortune in Hong Kong, and his life was the epitome of the rags-to- riches story typical of the freewheeling former colony. But it was his connections with Beijing, his position as, arguably, the Chinese Communist Party’s most trusted person in Hong Kong that won him his greatest renown.

His close ties to Beijing were recognised when he was appointed a vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) — the main advisory body to China’s parliament. A leading position on the CPPCC is the highest reward that Beijing gives to non-party members to show appreciation for contributions to China, and Fok’s appointment in 1993 — four years before Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule — underscored his importance in the eyes of China’s rulers. Only one other Hong Kong citizen, the former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, holds an equivalent position.

Fok’s power-broking credentials were demonstrated before Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule when he introduced the Chinese President, Jiang Zemin, to Tung, so paving the way for the shipping magnate to become the territory’s first leader under Chinese rule.

It was a long way from the dirt-poor village of Panyu in southern Guangdong Province where Fok was born in 1923. His father was a fisherman who lived on a sampan, and Fok’s childhood was a tragic one. His father died when he was 7 and he was forced to quit his studies at Queen’s College in Hong Kong when the Japanese Army invaded Hong Kong in 1941.

He laboured as a coolie at Kai Tak airport and as a worker shoveling coal on ferries while struggling to run his family’s small shipping business. By the time the war ended his industriousness had enabled him to begin laying the foundations of a business empire. His break came with the Korean War in the early 1950s when he defied a UN embargo to smuggle vital medical supplies, including penicillin, into mainland China.

Fok always denied rumours of weapons trafficking at that time, saying only that he smuggled such items as sheet iron, pipes, petrol and tyres. Whatever the real story, his patriotism was generously repaid. He won various business monopolies from the communists and cemented his reputation among the Communist leadership as a loyal patriot.

In 1954 his construction and real estate company pioneered the practice of finding buyers for flats even before they had been built, thus revolutionising and riding a housing boom in the city. In the next decade he saw the potential of neighbouring Macau and joined forces with the nascent casino mogul Stanley Ho to win a government gambling monopoly in 1961. It was a lucrative move: the Macau casino business supplied a large chunk of Fok’s considerable fortune — this year Forbes magazine ranked Fok as number 181 on its rich list with an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion.

After Macau Fok set his sights on mainland China. Only one metalled road existed in Guangdong when he began to invest. Just two years after the launch of economic reform, he set up the mainland’s first joint-venture hotel with a foreign partner. Three years later, in 1983, he opened the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou – the first five-star joint-venture hotel in mainland China.

He developed a close relationship with the Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping, who spent his southern vacations at Fok’s ground-breaking Zhongshan Hot Spring Resort. After the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, Fok joined 19 other representatives to pass a resolution condemning Beijing’s actions and remembering the dead students. The move did not harm his close ties with Beijing.

In the 1990s he continued to invest millions of dollars in the mainland — in a high-technology park in Guangdong — and he donated millions of dollars to the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong.

Before the handover of Hong Kong, Fok was a member of the drafting committee for the Basic Law of Hong Kong.

His business and political interests did not divert him from his passion for soccer. In 1970 he flew the Brazilian team Santos, including its star player, Pelé, to Hong Kong for an exhibition match. And even in middle age Fok was often to be seen playing street football with the Hong Kong’s top players on the city’s concrete pitches. He is survived by his two sons; the elder, Timothy, is a member of the Hong Kong legislature.

Henry Fok Ying-tung, tycoon, was born on May 10, 1923. He died on October 28, 2006, aged 83.