WANG JIANLIN started life with a red spoon in his mouth. His father was a Communist military hero who fought alongside Mao. Thanks to his influence, the youngster was able to join the People’s Liberation Army at 15 and so avoid the worst deprivations of the Cultural Revolution. After 17 years in the army, he decided that the future belonged not to generals but to businessmen. So in 1988, after a stint as a bureaucrat, he formed a property company in the north-eastern city of Dalian, using $80,000 of borrowed money.His firm, Dalian Wanda, is now China’s biggest private property developer, with shopping centres opened, or coming soon, in 100 cities. Last year its revenues rose to 243 billion yuan ($40 billion), up by 30% on a year earlier (see chart 1). The $3.7 billion flotation of its property division in December sent his personal fortune soaring past $25 billion: he vies with Alibaba’s Jack Ma for the title of the country’s richest man. Now China’s land king is going global and diversifying from property.
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from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1ArCLCq
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