The Rise and Fall of Wang Jianlin: How China’s Richest Man Lost His Empire I China Insights

Hello friends, it's Sunday again, and time for another story. The man who was once China's richest person has now become a deadbeat. On May 21st, Yonghui Superstores officially filed a case, requesting the court to enforce a compulsory execution against Wang Jianlin for 3.8 billion yuan. Following this, Wang Jianlin's son, Wang Sikong, had 880,000 yuan worth of equity frozen, and their core assets were auctioned off at a 40% discount. People suddenly realize that the once-mighty Wanda Empire has lost 12 billion yuan in just 5 years. Everyone is asking, this is Wang Jianlin we're talking about, right? This man, who deeply understands the rules of the CCP's political business game, who managed to weave Xi Jinping's brother-in-law, Wen Jiabao's daughter, Zhao Qinglin's son-in-law, and half the families of the Politburo into his list of shareholders, how could he end up in such dire straits? Now, at a time when China's richest people are becoming subjects of enforcement actions, it's worth taking a look at the rise and fall of Wang Jianlin, one of China's top businessmen. Let's take a look at Wanda and this most secretive, internal bleeding of Chinese private enterprises. Wang Jianlin's real starting point was in 1988. That year, he was 34, had just left the military, and within a few years was assigned to manage a state-owned housing company in Dalian that was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was this kind of mess that eventually became Wanda. The reason he was able to rise was because of one person. This person was Bo Xilai. In 1989, Bo Xilai became the mayor of Dalian. The following year, under Bo Xilai's arrangement, Wanda secured the old city renovation project on Beijing Street in Dalian. That single project earned nearly 10 million yuan, which was an astronomical figure at the time. After that, Bo Xilai kept giving Wanda one opportunity after another. In 1992, he recommended Wanda to be among the first batch of joint-stock reform pilot companies in northeast China. This move paved the way for Wang Jianlin to later transform the company. Wanda transformed from a state-owned enterprise into a private company, setting the stage for what was to come. In 1994, Bo Xilai wanted to turn Dalian into a soccer city, and Wang Jianlin immediately established the Wanda Soccer Team. He even brought in Bo Xilai's wife, Jiukai Lai, to serve as the team's legal advisor. When it came to land policies and loans, Bo Xilai gave Wanda the green light every step of the way. You could say that Bo Xilai was the most important man in the first half of Wang Jianlin's life. But this relationship was unstable from the very beginning. In Wang Jianlin's eyes, he saw Bo Xilai as a buddy. But in the eyes of someone like Bo Xilai, a second-generation red aristocrat, Wang Jianlin was nothing more than a tool, a pawn on the chessboard. Once, they fell out publicly over a million-yuan soccer bonus. Bo Xilai promised, but retracted. Wang Jianlin confronted him immediately. Wasn't that bold? So very soon, someone even more obedient than Wang Jianlin showed up. This person was Xu Ming. He followed every order from Bo Xilai and his wife, willingly playing the role of a lackey, and quickly replaced Wang Jianlin to become the real money man for the state. In the year 2000, Wang Jianlin handed over the soccer team to Xu Ming. The team's name was also changed from Wanda to Shidei. This transaction marked the official handover of the state's white glove role. During this early period, Wengdian Lin learned a saying, stay close to the government, stay away from politics. These eight words later became his protective charm. But one day, they would also become his predicament. Entering the 21st century, Wanda experienced two turning points that changed its fate. The first was its transformation from a state-owned enterprise to a private company. At that time, the party secretary of Dalian was Sun Chunlan, who later became vice premier of the state council. With her support, Wanda's original state-owned shareholders gradually transferred their shares to Wang Jianlin, and from then on, Wanda became a private enterprise. The second turning point was that Wanda found its core weapon, commercial real estate, which later became well-known as Wanda Plaza. A Wanda Plaza is not just a shopping mall. It includes hotels, office buildings, pedestrian streets, and upscale residences, all connected to form a complete commercial ecosystem. It can be built on the outskirts of a city and places where there's nothing at all, and then it creates a commercial district all by itself. This ability is called creation capability within the system. For local officials eager to boost GDP, Wanda Plaza was practically a lifesaver. So very quickly, a remarkable phenomenon appeared. Local governments were scrambling to invite Wanda to their cities, and Wanda Plaza soon became a machine for local officials to print GDP numbers. But this machine has a fatal flaw. It burns through money like crazy, and the return on investment is extremely slow. It takes three to five years to build a single plaza. As for the shops, Wang Jianlin even set a rule that they could only be rented, not sold. That means for several years, money is only going out, not coming in. And this brings up a question. Listen up, everyone. This is important. Wanda's lifeblood has never been real estate, unlike Shu Jian's Evergrande. Instead, it's the constant flow of financing. If they can't get loans, then this whole machine comes to a halt. But where does all that money come from? This is the most secretive and also the most critical part of Wanda's story. Wang Jianlin came up with a financing method that outsiders call circular financing. Simply put, he uses completed Wanda plazas as collateral to get loans worth up to 70% of the rental income. Then he bypasses the local bank branches and goes straight to the bank headquarters. He signs cooperation agreements directly with them, and each deal secures a credit line worth billions of yuan. With this kind of credit line, Wang Jianlin basically has a pocket he can reach into for cash anytime he wants, without having to go through the whole bank approval process every time he needs a loan. For regular private companies, this kind of privilege is something they wouldn't even dare to dream of. So you might be curious, who helped him open up this channel? In 2005, Wanda issued a bond overseas through the international investment bank Cori. The event itself wasn't that significant, but the key was a person at Cori named Liu Hui. This guy's dad was Liu Mingkang, who was the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission at the time. Once Wanda's Wang Jianlin got connected with Liu Mingkang, it was like the entire national team was in his pocket. Very soon, both the Bank of China and the Agricultura Bank of China signed headquarter-to-headquarter credit agreements with Wanda. And if you think about it, getting these two major state-owned banks to sign credit agreements basically meant that Wang Jianlin had gotten a golden pass to do business all over the country. It was basically saying, I'm someone with backing from the top. This not only gave Wanda the financial confidence to acquire land all over the country, but also made local banks see which way the wind was blowing. They didn't dare refuse him loans, and even scrambled to lend him money. But as we mentioned earlier, Wanda's appetite for capital was huge, so just having the national team on board wasn't enough. He also needed help from his circle of friends. At the later bell ringing ceremony, Wang Jianlin specifically thanked two people, One is the power behind the scenes at China Mencheng Bank, and the other is the long-time godfather at the helm of China Merchants Bank, both are close personal friends of Wang Jianlin. See, with one line to the national team and another to his circle of friends, these two major financial arteries, both overt and behind the scenes, supported Wanda through its early tough times. But what truly transformed Wanda, turning it from a real estate developer into a top-tier player in the world of capital, was the next group of people. Who were those strategic investors who got in at just the right moment, right before Wanda went public? Let me read you a few names. Deng Jiagui, Xi Jinping's brother-in-law, Wen Ruchun, Wen Jiabao's daughter, Li Batan, Zhao Qinglin's son-in-law, and Wang Xinyu, Wang Xiaogu's son. Just think about it. When your list of shareholders includes names like these, what bank president would dare refuse you a loan? What provincial or city official would dare hold up your land deals? At this point, it's no longer just ordinary fundraising. It's exchanging shares with the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party for protection, trading profits for connections. At this stage, these top-tier power players replaced Bo Xilai as Wang Jianlin's new backers. From 2012 to 2016, those four years were Wanda's most glorious period. Looking outward, Wanda went on a global shopping spree, from AMC theaters in the U.S. to landmark buildings in Spain to legendary entertainment in Hollywood. In just a few years, they poured 50 billion yuan into overseas investments. Where did all this astronomical money come from? It came from the Export-Import Bank of China and the Bank of China. They gave Wanda blank checks with no spending limit. Back then, whether it was Vice Premier Ma Kai, who oversaw finance, or Vice Premier Wang Yang, who was in charge of commerce, Wanda had connections with all the power players who controlled the direction of China's money. And in the capital markets, Wang Jianlin was even more in his element. In 2014 and 2015, Wanda Commercial and Wanda Cinemas were both spectacularly listed on the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges, respectively. The powerhouse behind the scenes was BOCI, Bank of China International. And behind BOCI's top executives stood Yang Fan, the daughter of then-Politburo member Lu Yandong. In 2015, on the Harun Global Chinese Rich List, Wang Jianlin replaced Li Ka-shing as the richest Chinese in the world with a fortune of 260 billion yuan. That year, he said something that all of China remembers. First, set a small goal. For example, let me make 100 million yuan first. At that time, Wang Jianlin held unrivaled resources in his hands and under his feet was the leverage of the Chinese Communist Party's state bank. He probably thought that in those eight words, stay close to the government, stay away from politics, he had found the ultimate secret for Chinese businessmen. But little did he know, this was the last blaze of glory before the darkest moment of his life. In October 2015, Wang Jianlin was invited to give a speech at Harvard University. He was the first Chinese entrepreneur to take that stage, basking in the spotlight. But he didn't expect that what awaited him was actually a trap. Let's get to the heart of the matter. Before Wanda went public, among its top 20 shareholders, four were relatives of Chinese Communist Party Politburo members or higher-ranking leaders. This included a company controlled by Xi Jinping's sister, This is the most sensitive and untouchable topic in the Chinese Communist Party, the wealth of the top leader's family. The host threw this question at Wang Jianlin right in front of the whole audience. If you were him, how would you answer? Normally, with a question like this, you'd expect someone to dodge it or give a vague answer. But that day, Wang Jianlin must have really wanted to defend the Xi family, so he chose to answer head-on. He said that Deng Xiaogui did participate in Wanda's private placement in 2009, but it was a normal business investment. He also said that Mr. Deng Xiaogui gave up huge profits. He invested for six years, and just when he was about to make a lot of money, he chose not to and withdrew early. This incident doesn't prove corruption. On the contrary, it proves that President Xi is strict in governing the country, and even stricter with his own family. Of course, the main point here was to clear the Xi family's name, but that's exactly where the problem lies. First, he basically admitted to the world that Xi Jinping's brother-in-law really did invest in Wanda. Second, and even more critically, is the chain reaction triggered by the transfer. Later, reporters dug up that in 2013, Deng Xiaogui did indeed transfer his shares, handing them over to someone named Xu Zaisheng. But this Xu Zaisheng had actually been a longtime employee of Qi Chaochao and her husband for over a decade. So sometimes the shares are transferred in name only, while the real owner stays the same. With Wang Jianlin's statement, it basically confirmed the trick that Chinese Communist Party elites have been playing for decades, using white gloves. Within just a few hours, this video segment and the related reports were completely scrubbed from the entire Chinese internet. Wanda's official website quickly posted the full text of the speech in an urgent attempt to put out the fire. But it was already too late. At this point, after all the years Wang Jianlin spent carefully building his protection at the highest level, a landmine had already been planted. All that was missing was a hidden trigger. Around 2016, the Chinese Communist Party's biggest diplomatic victories in Southeast Asia were securing two allies, Duterte of the Philippines and Najib, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. In Najib's hands was a piece of land that every developer in the world was drooling over, Bandar Malaysia. So what about this land? It's right in downtown Kuala Lumpur, just seven kilometers from the Petronas Twin Towers, and it's as big as five Tiananmen Squares. At the time, it was the only large undeveloped plot left in the city center of any capital in the world. Most importantly, the Chinese government had planned a high-speed rail line running from Kunming through Thailand directly to Malaysia and Singapore, and Bandar Malaysia was set to be the final terminus of this high-speed rail. If this high-speed rail were completed, it would be the most dazzling achievement of the Belt and Road Initiative. China's influence in Southeast Asia would reach an all-time high. So from the very beginning, this project was a national-level strategy for the Chinese government, handled by their national security agencies. They kept a close watch on the entire process, and the first team they sent in was, of course, their own people. The one who secured this piece of land wasn't WANDA, but the state-owned enterprise China Railway Group. At the end of 2015, China Railway, together with a Malaysian company, signed an agreement and invested billions of ringgit to acquire a 60% stake in Bandar Malaysia. In 2016, the president of China Railway even flew to Kuala Lumpur in person to announce the official launch of the project, complete with a grand celebration. But right at this time, something major happened. U.S. Department of Justice discovered that Najib, together with a financial fixer named Joe Low, had siphoned off $4.5 billion from the state-owned company 1MDB, which owned Bandar Malaysia. Out of that, $700 million went straight into Najib's own pocket. This became the world-shaking 1MDB scandal that made headlines everywhere. If you're interested in hearing more about it, let me know in the comments and I'll make a video to tell you all about it. With this, Najib's position as prime minister became shaky. He desperately needed to sell Bandar Malaysia at a higher price, first, to fill the gaping hole left by the missing funds, and second, to give the U.S. an explanation. However, on May 3rd, 2017, the Malaysian government suddenly and unilaterally announced that they would no longer sell to China Railway. The people from China Railway were completely stunned. They had already poured huge amounts of money into the early stages of this project, and news of their victory had long since been reported to the top levels of the Chinese government. Now, suddenly being kicked out by Malaysia, how are they supposed to explain this to their superiors? And behind all of this, there was an invisible hand at work. What was it? Let's leave that as a cliffhanger for now. Later, people from China's Ministry of State Security approached Najib and assured him, saying, don't worry. Even though China Railway won't be taking over, there's another Chinese company called Wanda that can absolutely handle this project. Before this, the leaders from the Ministry of State Security had already called in Wang Jianlin for a special meeting, telling him how important the Bandar Malaysia project was for the country. They hoped he would take it over at a high price, and even promised that Malaysia would offer an oil field to subsidize Wanda's losses. For a red-collar businessman like Wang Jianlin, how could he dare say no in this situation? He could only agree to move forward and then arranged for his people to go to Malaysia for some initial discussions. What he didn't know was that the Ministry of State Security had already promised Malaysia in advance that he would take over the project. Because after Najib's corruption scandal broke out today, the Chinese Communist Party had already realized this was a mess. If China Railway stepped in, not only would they have to put in even more money, but they'd also get caught up in the scandal. How could they possibly let their own state-owned enterprise, their own favorite son, take the fall for this kind of trap? So the CCP secretly rejected the China Railway deal, but they didn't tell China Railway about it. And Wanda was pushed to the forefront by the CCP to take the fall for China Railway as an unofficial scapegoat. Wang Jianlin had no idea about any of these stormy undercurrents. He thought he was just cooperating with the country on something. In reality, he had stepped right into a trap that the CCP had carefully set for him. It was a trap set for him. On May 13th of that year, Najib flew to Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum. Normally, when a country's prime minister comes to Beijing, the first stop should be meeting with top Chinese officials to discuss diplomacy and cooperation. But as soon as Najib got off the plane, his first request caught everyone off guard. He wanted to meet Wang Jianlin. The problem was, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no idea about this, and Wang Jianlin himself didn't know anything about it either. What made it even more awkward was that Najib didn't come alone. He brought along a whole group of accompanying journalists. Why? Because he couldn't wait to announce to the world that he had already found a new buyer for the mess that was Bandar Malaysia. And that new buyer was none other than China's richest man, Wang Jianlin. So you can imagine the scene. On one side, the Malaysian prime minister is all excited, looking at his new savior. On the other side, Wang Jianlin was completely baffled, suddenly pushed onto the table without even understanding what kind of game he was being dragged into. But in this situation, Wang Jianlin didn't dare to embarrass the other party. After all, he was facing the prime minister of a country with the whole Belt and Road initiative as the backdrop. With the cameras already set up by the reporters, he had no choice but to go along with the conversation. As soon as the meeting ended, Najib immediately held a press conference, announcing to the public that China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, was very interested in the Bandar Malaysia project. The next day, Wang Jianlin attended a forum as an entrepreneur. After the event, speaking to CCTV, he publicly stated that WANDA would launch two projects He harshly criticized Chen, not realizing that this very statement marked the first fecund of his own downfall. Don't forget, as we mentioned earlier, the central government had already rejected China Railway's deal, but China Railway itself was unaware of this. China Railway quickly shifted the blame. They reported to the government and told the media it was WANDA's fault, claiming WANDA was incompetent. They even accused Wang Jianlin of using bank credit to maliciously snatch away a national strategic project. This report, it said, was delivered directly to the top leadership through special channels, reaching Bo Jianlin. He thought he had done a great job, but in Xi Jinping's eyes, he became the kind of ambitious person who took the country's money and undermined national interests. It's said that when the official in charge reported this matter, Xi Jinping didn't give any clear instructions. He just made a light, offhand remark. These private enterprises were only able to expand abroad because your banks gave them loans. That sentence was the final verdict. Think about China in 2017. Xi Jinping had just established his core leadership position and the entire system was eager to pledge loyalty to him. And the best way to show loyalty is to implement every signal from the leader as quickly and forcefully as possible. So the people below sprang into action right away. Within just half a month, financial regulatory authorities urgently ordered major banks to investigate and assess the credit and overseas financing risks of several major conglomerates, specifically naming the sports and entertainment club sectors for scrutiny. These keywords were practically tailor-made for Wanda's line of business. The winds had shifted. Not long after, rumors started circulating that Wang Jianlin had been banned from leaving the country. This was the closest Wang Jianlin had ever come to the edge of the abyss in his life. It's said that at the time, he urgently sought help from Jack Ma, which is how he managed to leave the country and get to Hong Kong. Once he arrived in Hong Kong, Wanda quickly released a photo showing Wang Jianlin meeting with Teng Chihua. The message behind this photo was clear. Look, our chairman can come and go as he pleases. But no matter how relaxed he looked in the photo, it couldn't hide just how close he was to the brink. During that period, Wang Jianlin did two things. One was racing against death, selling off assets. On July 19th, he sold 77 hotels and a package deal to R&F Properties and 13 Wanda cultural tourism projects to Sunac, bringing in 63.7 billion yuan in cash all at once. This was the most brutal self-amputation in the history of Chinese business. First, he held onto the cash to plug the hole in case the banks suddenly called in their loans. But selling assets could only save his life. It couldn't remove the label pinned on him for snatching central SOE projects. He had to get his message to the top leadership. From beginning to end, he was only cooperating with the Ministry of State Security. He never intended to snatch China Railway's juicy projects in the first place. But who would deliver this report? This was the moment that truly tested his connections and also revealed people's true colors. Those powerful shareholders of his had already distanced themselves long ago. Who would still dare to stick their neck out to smooth Xi Jinping's frown for a private company? And Xi Jinping's relatives couldn't hate him more. There was no way they'd step in for him at a time like this. With no other options, he went to seek out Wang Yang. Why Wang Yang? There were two connections. One was Dong Zhanyue, the head of Wanda Financial, who used to be chairman of Guanghua Bank when Wang Yang happened to be the party secretary of Guangdong Province. They had a relationship. The other connection, Wang Yang's son-in-law Zhang Xinliang is the grandson of founding general Zhang Aiping, who just so happened to be Wang Jianlin's father-in-law's old boss back in the day. Wang Yang didn't step in himself but sent his son-in-law to investigate. The message back was to talk to Yu Zhengsheng. At the time, Yu was the CPPCC chairman overseeing the United Front, where Wang Jianlin served as a standing committee member, the ACFIC vice chairman reported. Also, Yu Zhengsheng and Xi Jinping are longtime friends. He dared to speak up. Wang Jianlin reported the situation to Yu Zhengsheng and also went through the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. He formally submitted a report, which Yu Zhengsheng then forwarded to Xi Jinping. After the relevant departments verified that the situation was true, the shackle that had been placed on Wang Jianlin was finally removed. In the second half of 2017, major banks gradually resumed normal credit lines to WANDA. Wang Jianlin basically came back from the brink of death. After escaping from the brink of death, Wang Jianlin thought he had already overcome the hardest hurdle, so he doubled down on showing his loyalty. He went to visit Liangzhehe, where Xi Jinping had once worked as a sent-down youth, and launched the Yan'an-Wanda City project with a 12 billion yuan investment, claiming it was a tribute for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. He also went to Danji and Guizhou and poured over 2 billion yuan into poverty alleviation efforts. But what he didn't know was that an even greater humiliation was still to come. Around 2016, a trend swept through China called the return of Chinese concept stocks. This meant a company might be worth 1 yuan in the U.S. or Hong Kong, but back on China's A-shares, it could be valued at 5 or 6 yuan, a huge gap. So many companies returned to the A-share market. Seeing this, Wang Jianlin was tempted too. After WANDA commercial listed in Hong Kong, its stock stayed lukewarm. Feeling undervalued, he believed delisting from Hong Kong to move back to A-shares would make his net worth instantly skyrocket. But delisting and privatization require a huge amount of money. He wanted to borrow this money from an investment consortium. But why would they just lend it to him? So both sides signed a betting agreement. What exactly is that? Simply put, it's a wager. So what about the investors? Right now, they're lending you the money. And you promised them that you'll definitely be able to go public on the A-share market within a certain period. If you win the bet, everyone's happy. And this money becomes a cheap boost. But if you lose the bet and can't go public on time, then this investment immediately turns into a debt bomb. You'll have to come up with tens of billions, plus all the interest accrued over the years. You have to buy back their shares at the original price. Friends, can you sense the subtle change here? There used to be powerful people and state banks backing this money. And when it flowed into Wanda and Wan Jianlin on its own, it was sweet as honey. Now that the backing is gone, it can only borrow money from market consortiums. And if these bets go south, that money could turn into a knife, forcing it to give back everything it owns. It's still financing, but now it tastes extremely bitter. The first betting agreement happened in 2016. Both parties agreed that Wanda would relist on the A-shares market before 2018. But in China, the normal queue for listing is very slow. It can sometimes take three to five years, so there was not enough time. So Wan Jianlin decided to take a shortcut. Backdoor listing means finding a company that's already listed on the A-shares market, but is about to go bankrupt, and using it as a shell. Wanda would inject its own assets into it, making itself a shareholder of that company. This way, the assets instantly become part of a listed company without having to go through the long IPO queue. At the time, the operation was handled by CIC Securities, and Wang Qishan vouched for it. Wang Jianlin, who used to be his secretary, thought he could help him get everything done. But no matter how carefully they planned, they never expected the policy would suddenly make a 180-degree turn. By noon, there was a clackdown on financial irregularities and backdoor listings. So Wanda, which had just exited the Hong Kong stock market, suddenly found itself unable to get into the A-shares market. They lost the first round. In 2018, the first betting agreement was on the verge of blowing up. So in order to pay back the money, what did Wang Jianlin do? He was forced to start a second high-stakes gamble. He brought in the four giants, Tencent, Suning, JD.com, and Sunac, raising 34 billion yuan. The price was signing a second betting agreement. Wanda had to go public on the A-shares market before October 2023. The investment banks ran the numbers again, thinking this time the schedule would be enough. But once again, they got it wrong. In 2020, the Chinese Communist Party introduced the strictest real estate regulations ever. The Three Red Lines policy. To get regulatory approval, Wang Jianlin had already painfully stripped away all his heavy assets, aiming to turn Wanda Commercial into a purely asset-like company. He thought that as long as he didn't build properties himself and only collected rent, he could avoid the Three Red Lines targeting real estate companies. But he was being way too naive. In the eyes of the regulators, it's not up to you to decide what kind of company Wanda is. It depends on how the authorities define it. So Wanda submitted its application to the China Securities Regulatory Commission four times, but each time it got stuck. The regulators neither rejected nor approved it. They just left him hanging. Because of this, Wanda set the record for the slowest and most frustrating IPO process for a private Chinese company. In 2021, Wanda had no choice but to withdraw its A-share application. Since it couldn't get listed on the A-share market, they figured they might as well go back to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. That same year, Wang Jianlin registered a new entity in Zhuhai and brought in 22 institutions, including Tencent, Ant Group, Country Garden, and the famous Taikong as investors, raising 38 billion yuan and signing a third high-stakes agreement. By the end of 2023, Wanda had to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This time, Wang Jianlin felt certain of victory since Wanda had already been listed in Hong Kong before and everything was basically ready to go. But once again, he overlooked a hurdle called the Mainland Clause. Because according to the new regulations, for private companies to go public in Hong Kong, they must obtain an overseas listing filing from the China Securities Regulatory Commission. And this filing from the CSRC is just like the approval for an A-share listing. It gets stuck in a never-ending loop. No matter how much Wanda tried to communicate, this crucial approval just kept getting delayed again and again. Isn't this just someone making things difficult for him? At the end of 2023, the third round of the bet came due again and Wang Jianlin lost for the third time in a row. He lost all three rounds of the bet. After this resounding slap in the face, Wang Jianlin finally realized that he was never really a trendsetter riding the waves of the times, but rather just a piece of meat on the chopping block of power. When the party wants you to prosper, you can be the richest man. When the party wants you to shrink, you have to slim down. You're destined to have no way out. As for what happened next, we all know the story. From 2023 to 2025, Wanda sold off more than 80 Wanda plazas, bringing in over 90 billion yuan. In 2025, he bundled together 48 core city plazas and sold them all at a rock-bottom price of 50 billion yuan to Taicong, Tencent, and JD.com. By now, pretty much everything that could be sold has already been sold. But even so, the speed at which he sold off assets still couldn't keep up with the pace of debt interest and maturities. By the end of 2025, Wanda Group's total liabilities were still stuck at the 600 billion yuan redline, while the cash on hand was down to just a little over 10 billion yuan. That amount wasn't even enough to cover a fraction of the interest payments. So the recent forced execution against Yang Hui wasn't some sudden accident. It was the dramatic collapse of a giant. Here's an official heads up. Right now, Wang Jianlin still has 140 unsold Wanda plazas under his name, as well as cultural tourism projects like Changbai Mountain and Lanzhan that are still unresolved. If he's lucky in handling these, maybe his family can still hold on to a fortune worth several tens of billions. At least he probably won't end up behind bars like Xu Jiayin. But there's one thing worth mentioning. Over the past 10 years of real estate crises, plenty of bosses have either fled or landed in jail. Yet to this day, Wanda remains one of the very few companies still standing in China's real estate industry. It's one of the few private companies that hasn't defaulted on the public market. In recent years, Wang Jianlin has been buying and selling assets to the point of exhaustion, but he's always managed to keep his back straight and stand tall. Throughout his life, he's treated the phrase stay close to the government, stay away from politics as a protective charm for survival. Among all of China's top tycoons, he's probably the one who understands these rules the best. But what he never expected was that these rules could change at any moment, depending on what's needed. In this game, knowing the rules doesn't mean you can keep yourself out of trouble. And the most absurd reality is that while you're anxiously following the rules, the very people who set them are busy deciding when your time is up. Wang Jianlin's story really is quite moving, and I have to say, it left me with a lot of feelings. So friends, if you have thoughts to share, please be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think. His experience is actually quite different from Xu Jiayin's. We actually did an episode before that was all about Xu Jiayin's story, so feel free to check that out. All right, that's it for today. Wishing everyone a great weekend. If you enjoy my show, don't forget to give me a like before you leave. Dear friends, you're welcome to subscribe to Zen Viewpoint. This way you'll be able to see my latest videos right on your YouTube homepage. Also, feel free to share my videos with your friends. Every interaction from you helps trigger YouTube's recommendation system for me, so I want to thank all of you in advance. All right, thank you all for watching. We'll see each other again next Tuesday on Zen Viewpoint. Same time. Don't miss it. Bye-bye.