The ancients saw jade as embodying all the virtues of a perfect gentleman, the junzi. As many people noted, Sir Joseph—the philanthropist, collector (particularly of Chinese jade), and businessman—was a gentleman in the true sense of the word and a model of civic-minded humanitarianism. He was also someone of whom it truly could be said that he left the world a better place for having lived in it. However, his name is not generally well known on the world stage because of his innate modesty and desire to maintain a low profile.

Sir Joseph, the grandson of Sir Robert Hotung, was born in Shanghai in 1930 and was educated in China, first in Shanghai and then at St Louis College, in Tianjin (1948–49). He spent many of the war years in Shanghai, and for Sir Joseph, as for many others there, this period was one of deprivation and uncertainty. But he regarded those years as character building; he said his resilience and determination were nurtured during that time. He subsequently spent a year at university in Hong Kong but then decided to go to the United States to take a degree in economics at Catholic University in Washington, DC, where he graduated cum laude.