by Tracy You
A 65-year-old chairman of a Chinese health company has died of a heart attack on stage while reportedly giving tips about longevity in a speech.
Chen Peiwen, 65, was the leader of a firm selling traditional Chinese medicine products.
He collapsed in front of a shocked audience last month during an event in southern China, reports said.
According to Southern Metropolis Weekly, Mr Chen was the head of Zhongyi Health and Technology Company based in the southern province of Guangdong.
The company was established in August. Its main product is a £65-per-bottle tonic, which is billed to contain dozens of precious herbs and can help treat gout.
Staff from the health firm told the reporter that Mr Chen was attending a company’s promotional event on November 17 in Zhangzhou, a city in Fujian Province, when he had the heart attack.
Footage shows him falling down on the stage while walking back to the speech desk.
Wu Tianrong, the company’s CEO, told Pear Video that Mr Chen collapsed after giving the speech.
Mr Wu said Mr Chen had undergone heart bypass surgery 20 years ago and planned to go to hospital after the appearance to have a pacemaker fitted.
He said doctors had urged Mr Chen not to delay the operation.
“We did not expect the thing to happen to suddenly,” Mr Wu said.
The company denied rumours that Mr Chen was a health specialist and died after taking his own company’s tonic. It also rejected the claim that Mr Chen owned a fortune of six billion yuan (£652million).
It said it had no idea how the footage had ended up on the internet and suspected that it was a smear campaign launched by its competitors.
It is said that Mr Chen was a charitable person.
He was listed as one of the country’s official Good Samaritans by the central government in September, 2012.
By then, he had donated more than 900,000 yuan (£98,000) to the education industry and helped building free schools for dozens of years.
An average of 544,000 people drop dead in China every year and cardiac arrest is the main cause of death, according to People’s Daily.
This article was first published on Dailymail
