Tony Xia
Tony Jiantong Xia () is a Chinese businessman. He is the chairman, CEO and owner of Recon Group. Early life and education Xia was born in Quzhou, Zhejiang. At the age of 14, he left home to attend university in Beijing. He was amongst the first 25 of 1,000 selected to study abroad at Harvard (where he studied landscape design), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a five-month exchange to study at Trinity College, Oxford in 1998–99. He has a PhD as a doctor of design in urban planning. Career In March 1999, Xia founded design company XWHO in Boston, US co-owned by his then-girlfriend and one of his lecturers. The company relocated to Hangzhou, China where Xia started a planning company called Teamax, which he sold for £430 million. Recon Group Xia took over Chinese company Recon Group in 2004. The company is based in Beijing and Hangzhou and is the umbrella organisation for Xia's companies which operate in IT, health and agriculture, new energy and smart transportation, engineering and design, financial services, and sports, leisure, and tourism. Xia added he planned to invest in or buy football clubs in India, Spain, the US, and Australia to create