{Stability of leadership is widely praised in Asia, even if it isn't always widely practiced. Some of Asia's most successful countries have leaders and elder statesmen of long tenure: Indonesia's Suharto, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, China's Deng Xiaoping. Some of its most successful companies, likewise, are run by founder figures who stayed the course, men like Li Ka-shing of Hong Kong's Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd., Chung Ju-Yung of South Korea's Hyundai Group and Kazuo Inamori of Japan's Kyocera Corp.

But every institution must eventually have its changing of the guard. A new generation of Asian-Pacific leaders waits in the wings. The men and women in the region who will be tomorrow's movers and shakers are a disparate lot, some in their twenties or thirties, some already middle-aged and beyond; some the scions of powerful families; some the leaders of companies and institutions that are small today but will be big tomorrow. What unites them is a common inheritance: The responsibility to make the tough future decisions that will either ensure the region's peace and prosperity or consign it to tribulation and torment.

Who are these leaders of tomorrow? Predictions are hazardous, especially in a rapidly developing region. But whether because of their cleverness or their connections, some of those who could well be tomorrow's leaders are already identifiable. This is the first of an occasional series of articles in which The Asian Wall Street Journal looks at the generation ahead and what its rise might mean for the region.}

HONG KONG -- At 1,500 meters, Richard Li pulled back on the controls of the ultralight aircraft until the heavens rolled beneath his feet and the South China Sea appeared overhead.

From the ground, his colleagues at Star TV -- the troops, as Mr. Li calls them -- heard only the distant buzz of the tiny craft as it completed one graceful loop, then another. What they didn't hear were the screams of Alex Zilo, a Star programming executive riding shotgun with Mr. Li.

"He was someone to be identified out of the group for some encouragement," says Mr. Li, adding that he wanted to do something Mr. Zilo would remember.

Mr. Li, 26 years old, has surprised many people since his return to Hong Kong from Canada 3 1/2 years ago. Heir with his older brother, Victor, to one of Asia's biggest fortunes, he was widely regarded as just another rich man's son when he arrived here after 10 years abroad. Only the fame of his father, businessman Li Ka-shing, set him apart.

But in his role as creator of Star TV, Asia's first satellite television service, the young Mr. Li has won grudging respect. The sale of a majority stake in Star to media magnate Rupert Murdoch in July for a profit of about US$400 million won him even more. These achievements, and the energy and focus he brought to them, suggest that Mr. Li may have what it takes to become one of the region's leading lights in the decades to come.

If so, he would be somewhat of a rarity. Bankruptcy courts around the world are littered with the failures of billionaire sons. And the Asian custom of passing control of business empires along family lines has made the region particularly vulnerable to second-generation weaknesses. As a new generation takes over from the builders of Asia's prosperity, few of its designated heirs have distinguished themselves as anything more than able custodians.

The empire the Li brothers stand to inherit is valued today at more than US$8 billion. It spans Canada, China and much of Southeast Asia, and it includes controlling stakes in Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. and Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd., two of Hong Kong's largest listed companies.

More than his brother, Richard has stepped forward as an aggressive achiever bent on repeating the successes of his 65-year-old father, who dropped out of middle school to support his widowed mother two siblings. Richard recently turned down an offer from his father to run Hutchison Whampoa, a diversified company with sales of HK$21 billion a year. Instead, he plans to start a new technology-based company -- the details of which are to be announced soon -- with the profits earned from the Star sale.

He is a risk taker, but isn't reckless. Already an experienced pilot, he spent hours practicing the aviation stunt he pulled with Mr. Zilo, who is in his early 40s. He had the airplane equipped with a parachute and balanced according to Mr. Zilo's weight, and even took out an insurance policy on Mr. Zilo's life.

He moves easily among the world's most powerful business leaders. And, like his father, he works obsessively. "It's a family religion," says Steve Moss, a member of Star's founding team. Adds Mr. Zilo: "He's a forty-year-old in a twenty-six-year-old body."

However, Richard himself says making money alone isn't enough to hold his interest. "I am not going to spend my life doing things that I'm not intrigued with and that are just about making money," he says.

His critics attribute his early success largely to his father's power. To them, he is arrogant, "rules by fear" and is quick to humiliate subordinates. They doubt he can maintain the frenetic pace he kept up at Star, and argue that he will find it increasingly difficult to top his achievements to date. "He may burn out if he keeps up this pace," says a Hutchison executive.

Mr. Li, with a boyish face and an athletic build, rarely steps out of his role as the young tycoon these days. When he boarded an inflatable dinghy in Corsica in July to ride out to Rupert Murdoch's yacht and close the Star sale, he was dressed in a dark suit, understated tie and tasseled loafers. His hair seldom varies from a close crop; his barber is "my refuge," he says. Though he maintains a small coterie of close friends with whom he truly unwinds, they see less and less of him as his responsibilities grow.

His self-conscious mannerisms endear him to some people and grate on others. Though educated in the U.S., he speaks with a British accent. His sometimes stiff deportment parodies the television image of the billionaire boy: At a gathering of Stanford University alumni last year on the Li family yacht, Richard arrived via speedboat wearing white slacks, a blue blazer and a white nautical cap.

Even Richard concedes that such outings are partly for show. "You're acting for the waiters and the waiters are acting for you," he says, referring to a more recent visit to Nantucket Island, a blue-blood resort off the coast of Massachusetts.

Nearly everyone agrees that Richard is under tremendous pressure, from both his father and the close-knit, conservative Hong Kong society to which his family belongs. By his own admission, he would have been content to remain abroad had his father not summoned him home in early 1990.

Back in the colony, Richard quickly found his freedom crimped by his fame as Li Ka-shing's son. When something as innocuous as his dancing at a Janet Jackson concert found its way into the gossip pages of the territory's press, his father pointed it out. The message: Hong Kong is watching, so behave. To tone down his image, he gave up a Mercedes for a Toyota Camry, chauffeur-driven nonetheless. Within a year of his return, however, he moved out of his father's house and into an apartment alone.

That independence isn't shared by Victor, 29, who continues to live at the sprawling Li family home on the plush south side of Hong Kong Island even after his recent marriage. Though associates say Victor is the crown prince of the Li empire, he has attracted little attention to himself or his business pursuits, other than in his role in the US$1.5 billion redevelopment of Vancouver's Expo '86 site. "Victor is becoming very much his father's deputy," says a senior Cheung Kong executive.

People close to the family say Victor's position has forced Richard to work harder for his father's approval. Richard attributes the marked difference between himself and his brother to his early exposure to American culture. "I've been infected," he laughs.

He left Hong Kong at the age of 13 to attend prep school in Menlo Park, California, where he was installed alone in an apartment, without chaperone or maid (the school took no boarders). With imperfect English and only a handful of Asian-American classmates at the school, his first couple of years abroad were stressful and lonely. "I wasn't happy at all," he says.

Later, he took jobs in town to augment his allowance, scooping ice-cream behind the counter at Swenson's and even working a couple of months on the night shift at a local McDonald's. He says he took the jobs to avoid asking his father for more cash.

After finishing prep school in 1983, he entered Stanford, where he took a degree in computer engineering, and then went to work as an investment banker at Gordon Capital Corp., one of the top investment banks in Canada. He was there for four years before his father called him home.

Once here, Richard quickly latched onto satellite television as the project he would use to prove himself, drawing the attention of the press and skeptics eager to see him fail.

Hutchison already owned a third of the AsiaSat I satellite, and had been mulling ways to make use of that stake when Richard visited the Hutchison Telecommunications Ltd. division early in 1990. Smitten by the high-tech wizardry of earthstations and transponders, Richard called a meeting of the satellite team to decide whether a satellite-TV concept was viable. If it was, Richard would seek his father's backing.

The group gathered on a Friday afternoon in May in Hutchison Telecom's offices. Richard arrived in a polo shirt, looking even younger than his 23 years. "We were thinking, `Who is this kid, other than the boss's son?'" Mr. Zilo says.

It didn't take long for Richard to convince at least some of his new colleagues otherwise. Mr. Zilo recounts how the young Mr. Li absorbed details and asked demanding questions, keeping up the momentum as the light dimmed over the harbor outside. The meeting continued through the night and into the next day. Catering platters mounted in heaps around the room.

On Saturday night, the oldest of the men dropped to the floor with exhaustion; his wife was summoned to collect him. Finally, on Sunday morning, one of the men reminded Richard that it was Mother's Day and that some of those present had family obligations. The meeting broke.

But by the time each arrived home, Richard had phoned and invited them and their families for a day on the Li family yacht. With the relatives entertained, the satellite discussions resumed at sea.

"He had caught the fever," Mr. Zilo says.

That isn't surprising, given Richard's fascination with gadgets. He flies remote-control model planes. At Star, he had fiberoptic video lines installed between his and four other company offices. A beep would sound in Mr. Zilo's office, across Hong Kong harbor from Star's headquarters, calling everyone present to attention as Richard's face blinked onto a monitor.

"I love Star . . . because it is based on science," Richard says.

With an airtight business plan hammered out during the Mother's Day meeting, Richard went to his father for approval. The elder Mr. Li and Hutchison agreed to share start-up costs, which eventually totaled about US$110 million.

For the next three years, Richard applied himself to his project with a passion that amazes even his critics. Six months after his father signed off on the business plan, Richard managed to coax a reluctant Hong Kong government to grant Star a license to beam its programming to the satellite from Hong Kong. By April 1991, less than a year after Star's conception, the first test signal -- a video of clouds moving across a blue sky -- was bounced off the Asiasat satellite back to the colony.

On April 14, Star broadcast its first preview channel, and within eight months, all five of its channels, delivered to viewers free of charge, were going 24 hours a day. Today, the service is received in 11.5 million households from Egypt to Indonesia and as far north as Siberia.

By any measure, building Star from scratch in so short a time was a gargantuan task. Certainly, Richard's family background helped. For example, Cheung Kong associates such as Hilton Hotels and Canadian Imperial Bank signed on as Star's "founder advertisers," paying US$2 million for two-year ad packages that included an opportunity to buy a sliver of equity in Star. These deals rendered the fledgling company viable -- and more attractive to potential buyers -- from the start.

Still, Richard was by all accounts the driving force behind Star. He ensconced himself in a 12th-floor office in Hutchison House, the company's headquarters in Hong Kong's Central business district, reserving his penthouse office for non-Star business. A core group of executives met Mondays and Thursdays for as long as five hours at a stretch, debating issues such as how to develop Hindi-language programming and how to improve poor reception on Hong Kong televisions.

It was in these meetings that Richard built his reputation for dogged determination, and for confrontation. All-night work sessions weren't uncommon; sleeping bags were kept on hand to bed down exhausted staff. "There was a tremendous team spirit," says Mr. Moss.

Gatherings often degenerated into shouting matches, with Richard usually winning in the volume stakes. Before long, talk of his bad temper coursed through the halls of Star and into the Hong Kong rumor mill. To his fans, these flares showed a gifted businessman under pressure; to his critics, they were the tantrums of a spoiled heir.

"He ruled by fear and humiliation," says a former Star executive, who asked not to be identified because of continuing business links to Mr. Li.

Some of the brightest sparks flew between Richard and Simon Murray, then Hutchison's managing director. At one meeting, according to others who attended, Mr. Murray told Richard to "shut up." Richard then grabbed Mr. Murray by the arms and shouted for him to apologize. Face to face with Richard's unblinking eyes and slightly hawkish nose, Mr. Murray asked the young executive to remove his hands. He did. Both men say they have since reconciled.

"Yes, there were humiliations, but it wasn't personal," says Mr. Moss, the member of Star's founding team. Mr. Moss maintains that Richard's exacting attitude kept the group focused, and that "when he wasn't there, everything would fall apart."

The same brusque manner that helped Richard to motivate his staff often translated into hard-ball tactics in outside business dealings. His bravado even helped him in encounters with the formidable likes of Ted Turner, founder of Turner Broadcasting Corp. When Star was starting up, Richard flew to New York to discuss programming cooperation with Mr. Turner and other executives of the U.S. media giant. "These guys thought, `Here comes this little Chinese kid.' . . . They really put him down," says an investment banker familiar with the episode.

But Richard rejected Mr. Turner's demand that Star require subscribers to pay to receive the U.S. company's Cable News Network, and subsequently signed up British Broadcasting Corp. When the two men met months later for breakfast at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Richard didn't hesitate to light one of his Salem cigarettes while sitting across from Mr. Turner, an avid anti-smoker.

"He can't be cowed," Mr. Moss says.

By July this year, with Star's free service up and running and plans under way to launch four pay channels, Richard seized his opportunity to cash out. When he reached agreement with Mr. Murdoch's News Corp., he was holding talks with five separate buyers.

People close to Richard say he has mellowed with Star's success. After completing the sale, he gave two round-trip tickets to each of the 600 people on the company's staff for vacations in Phuket, Thailand; Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia; or Cebu, the Philippines. He also distributed big bonuses to a handful of key individuals, including a few who had left the company much earlier.

"He's changed a lot in the last two years," says Mr. Moss. "He's more considerate, more prepared to listen."

For now, his attention is fixed on his new venture. The as-yet-unnamed company, capitalized at US$400 million and formed with a core of executives that include most of the original Star team, will focus on infrastructure projects, particularly in high technology, and strategic investments.

"Maybe when I'm thirty-five, I will have decided that I want to call it quits and I don't want to be in business, and I want some other form of challenge," he says.

Meanwhile, he can rest assured that he has already helped shape Asia's future. After Richard and Mr. Murdoch agreed on the Star deal, the News Corp. chief arranged to have Richard flown back to Hong Kong to notify the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities of the deal before it was announced.

The Falcon 900 lost an engine over Uzbekistan in Central Asia and had to land in Tashkent. Richard rushed into the small airport terminal to draft notification letters and work the phones while a replacement jet was flown in from Paris. Nearby, a television played silently. On the screen: MTV delivered via Star.

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