Xu Family's Crimes and Punishments
Arthor :你兽爷
Translated by: Xi 南洋西风烈
Oct 1 2023
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This article describes some of the stories and events related to Xu Jiayin, the richest person in China and founder of China Evergrande Group, and his family. Please note that this information may be based on the author's perspective and reporting and should be interpreted with caution.
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In the winter of 2018, Xu Jiayin's father, Xu Xiangao, was not in good health. Two years prior, he had been critically ill. During that year, Evergrande's Henan subsidiary (Note: Henan = Henan Province of China) had a project named "FushouYuan (福寿园) "- literally means Blessings and Longevity Garden in Chinese. Although it shared a name with a listed company, its primary work location was at Mr. Xu's ancestral home in a wheat field in Jutaigang Village, northwest of Taikang County, Zhoukou City, Henan Province of China.
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In this wheat field, they exchanged land with several villagers and relocated a few graves. It took them nearly a year to construct a rectangular compound covering over a dozen Mu (Note: Mu is a typical unit for area widely used in China, and 1 Mu = 666 square meter).
The compound's walls were three meters high. The main gate was adorned with green tiles, and in the center, the gate read "Shou’an Gate." - literally means Longevity and Peace Gate in Chinese, which shared the same name with that one in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Inside the courtyard, there were artificial hills, fountains, pavilions, and many transplanted ancient trees.
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This compound was none other than Mr. Xu's ancestral tomb. Evergrande's Henan subsidiary's primary task was, in fact, to do something unusual:
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Repair the ancestral tomb.
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1.
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At the time, the "FushouYuan" project had a plan to prepare for the possible passing of Xu Xiangao. However, in 2016, Mr. Xu's father managed to recover. But two years later, he fell critically ill again and told Mr. Xu:
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"Leaves must return to their roots."
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Wealth and prosperity do not belong to a foreign land; they are like night travel in fine clothes. So, Mr. Xu accompanied his elderly father and returned to Zhoukou. This marked the first time he had returned to his hometown after Evergrande became the biggest real estate company in this planet, and Mr. Xu became China's richest person according to Forbes.
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They say Evergrande's reports are like People's Daily, and Evergrande's meetings resemble the National People's Congress. Mr. Xu's homecoming was similarly grand.
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Mr. Xu planned to visit Zhoukou on December 15, 2018. Several middle-level managers from Evergrande's Henan subsidiary arrived in Zhoukou on November 10. For the following month, they stayed mostly in Zhoukou.
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They had many preparations to make. To complete the repair of the ancestral tomb for the richest man, they brought in several security personnel from Zhengzhou to guard the tomb.
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Mr. Xu wanted to have a simple and cheap meal in his old family house to remember the bitterness, savor the sweetness. Nobody had lived in their family's courtyard for decades, so the employees cleaned up the yard and tidied the rooms.
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Their house's door faced west. As soon as they stepped outside, there was a north-south road, with a 45-square-meter open space in the middle. They paved this area and created a courtyard.
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On the morning of December 15, 2018, Mr. Xu's father arrived in Zhoukou on a private plane. Mr. Xu's plane was slightly delayed.
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Upon arrival in Zhoukou, his father was directly admitted to the Taikang County People's Hospital, where they booked an entire floor, and medical staff were brought in from Shenzhen.
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To welcome the richest man back to his hometown, the city government had constructed a temporary asphalt road leading directly to his family's doorstep from the county. The road had been hastily repaired, and greenery was planted along the sides. Due to dust control, the county didn't have asphalt, so the city government brought in asphalt from other counties working on road construction projects.
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The reason they attached such importance to the richest man's return to his hometown was that he promised to give his hometown a pleasant surprise. He intended to build a world-class CBD in Zhoukou New District, with three to five major projects, including an oceanarium, a children's world, and a water park:
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Evergrande Children's World was set to surpass Disney's theme park.
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This kind of promise had been made by the richest man many times before. For example, in many cities, he had claimed that he would build the world's top theme park, Evergrande Children's World. However, to balance costs, local governments needed to provide some inexpensive residential land.
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With this lure, he had secured dozens of projects nationwide. Later, he sold houses worth hundreds of billions of Yuan on this residential land. However, not a single Evergrande Children's World had been realized.
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The same rhetoric had been employed when Evergrande ventured into the automobile industry. Xia Haijun, the former CEO of Evergrande who is currently missing, had said that Evergrande's core competitive advantage in the automobile field was that local governments would provide residential and living land:
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This was something other car manufacturers didn't have.
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Under the pretext of starting a car business, Evergrande had acquired many pieces of residential land.
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This time, when he claimed to increase investment in his hometown, the local leaders in Mr. Xu's hometown believed him. Perhaps they thought that even if Mr. Xu deceived others, he wouldn't deceive his fellow townspeople.
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Looking back a few years later, they had been proven naive. Mr. Xu's sole purpose in returning to Zhoukou was:
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To provide his father with a dignified farewell.
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Lazy Bear Sports reported that on the day of the reunion in Taigang Village, there were police officers all along the road from the county town to Taigang Village. Leaders at various levels accompanied the visit, and some neighbors and classmates in Mr Xu’s childhood were also arranged to meet the billionaire.
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Bodyguards guarded the entrances and exits of the billionaire's old house in the alley. Only those with permission were allowed inside.
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Mr. Xu distributed candies to the children in the village along the way, and he gave each household in the village 3,000 Yuan/YUAN in cash, a bag of 10 kilograms of Evergrande rice, and a barrel of Evergrande cooking oil (5 Liter).
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In the old and dilapidated house, Mr. Xu had lunch with the villagers. On the table were the usual food:
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Sweet potatoes, black buns, boiled cabbage and radish, sweet potato soup.
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A year later, the business partner of Evergrande Henan Company audited their joint venture company's accounts and found a baffling item on the accounts:
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Over 2 million Yuan expenses in rice and cooking oil.
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The partner asked how there could be such an expense. The executives of Evergrande Henan Company said, "It was for the event we held a year ago for our customers."
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The partner murmured, "Over 2 million Yuan worth of rice and cooking oil? How many customers out of all things do you have to serve?"
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It was just four or five thousand people-the population of Taigang Village.
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Although he was the richest person in China, Mr. Xu's personal extravagances were mostly covered by the company.
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From four private planes, including the Airbus ACJ330 and Airbus ACJ319, to a wine cellar in Hong Kong, to repairing ancestral graves and giving gifts to fellow villagers, even the money spent on his son's wedding a few years ago was covered by Evergrande Shenzhen Company.
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It wasn't much, just a small banquet, costing around ten million. Compared to Evergrande's over a trillion Yuan in debt, it was a drop in the bucket. There was a leaked Excel spreadsheet showing entertainment expense from Evergrande Group circulating on the internet, which shocked the public, but Evergrande employees were not surprised:
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It's nothing.
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After returning to his hometown for about ten days, on January 1, 2019, 96-year-old Xu Xiangao died in the hospital.
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He passed away peacefully without witnessing the downfall of his son, the former richest man in China.
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When Mr. Xu returned to his hometown that time, he took many photos with his childhood friends and elders. In the photos, there was a middle-aged woman with short hair who stood by Mr. Xu's side and attracted a lot of attention.
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Later, when Evergrande's publicity became widespread, everyone learned that she was Mr. Xu's wife, Ding Yumei. This was her first public appearance.
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In 1982, after graduating from the Metallurgy Department of Wuhan Iron and Steel College, Mr. Xu was assigned to work at Wuyang Iron and Steel Factory in Henan. It was there that he met and married Ding Yumei.
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Some articles portrayed Mrs. Xu as the woman who had supported Mr. Xu's career silently and stood by him through thick and thin. Even though her husband had amassed immense wealth, he had always been faithful to his marriage and family, never doing anything to harm his family.
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The billionaire himself said that he had made countless investments, but he considered his marriage to be his most successful one:
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I can't say I'm number one in the company in terms of marital relationship, but it has always been a model for Evergrande employees to learn from.
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Before returning to his hometown in 2017, Evergrande moved its headquarters from Guangzhou to Shenzhen. There were two explanations for this move: one said it was to backdoor-list Evergrande on the Shenzhen property market; the other said that a local official had fallen from grace, and Evergrande's club was implicated. Mr. Xu's departure for Shenzhen was to avoid trouble. The rise of Snowy Cedar in Guangzhou was also related to this move.
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After moving the headquarters to Shenzhen, Mr. Xu went to see a house at Shenzhen Bay No. 1 with his wife. He was very satisfied with the master bedroom and said, "I'll stay in this room." Then he looked at a smaller guest room, turned to his wife, and said:
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"You'll stay in this room."
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In the end, he spent 100 million Yuan to buy the top floor of Shenzhen Bay No. 1. Mr. Xu found the 900-square-meter house a bit too small, and he couldn't fit his bodyguards, so he wanted to buy the top floor as well because:
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"I can't have anyone above my bedroom."
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But the owner of Shenzhen Bay No. 1, Mr. Xu, declined his request.
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Mr. Xu had no choice but to spend another 100 million Yuan to buy a floor downstairs. After buying it, he started renovating it and wanted to replace all the glass with bulletproof glass, but the property management company refused.
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Being as wealthy as he was, he simply bought a villa at Shenzhen Bay No. 1. With a fence blocking it off, he started renovating it. After all, who could stop him from installing bulletproof glass in his own villa?
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Evergrande's headquarters building in Shenzhen is a rented premium office building with a total of 42 floors.
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Ordinary people could only go up to the 40th floor. The 40th floor was a particularly large conference room used to receive provincial and municipal leaders. There weren't many people with access to the 41st and 42nd floors. Besides Mr. Xu himself, there were departments called the President's Office and the Business Office.
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The 41st floor had a restaurant, tea room, gym, and KTV. In those years, they hosted many banquets, and Mr. Xu would usually request Louis XIII cognac because guests who were used to Maotai couldn't handle foreign liquor.
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That way, Mr. Xu can control the entire room.
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In this company with over a hundred thousand employees, Mr. Xu was the true emperor. Any executive who missed his call, no matter what time it was, ran the risk of being sent to a remote location.
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The 42nd floor was the clubhouse. Only the ladies from the President's Office and the Business Office came and went. Mrs. Xu had heard about it and visited the 42nd floor once.
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She came out with a dark face.
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Mrs. Xu became famous for the second time on September 10, 2021, right after the Evergrande wealth crisis erupted.
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On that day, the billionaire held a general meeting and said he had learned that tens of thousands of employees had bought Evergrande wealth products, many of them with their family members and friends. He felt great pressure and demanded that every effort be made to resolve the situation.
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"I can lose everything, but I can't let the investors of Evergrande wealth lose everything." Said Xu jiayin.
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The billionaire looked innocent. Whether it was the Evergrande wealth crisis or the disappearance of 13.4 billion Yuan from the property management company, he was always the last to know.
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But on that day, internal employees exposed the internal flows of Evergrande wealth. A woman named Ding Yumei, who had the same name as Mr. Xu's wife, had a maturity date for her financial product scheduled for July 14, 2021.
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However, on July 8th, Ding Yumei cashed out the entire principal of 23 million Yuan in advance, far ahead of other investors.
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Mrs. Xu became famous for the third time last month. Some media reported that she had already completed the divorce proceedings with Mr. Xu and became the former Mrs. Xu.
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Their divorce took place just before the Evergrande crisis. When some leaders heard that their "marriage was a model for Evergrande employees to learn from" and had completed the division of property, they were furious but powerless.
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Since the beginning of this year, Mr. Xu had basically not been involved in the operation of Evergrande Group; half a month ago, his secretary had already been unable to contact him; just before National Day, a listed company finally announced that Mr. Xu was under compulsory measures for suspected illegal activities.
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This wording was identical to the announcement made by HNA's Chen Feng before National Day in 2021.
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Mrs.Xu had been residing in Hong Kong for some time. However, in late July of this year, upon hearing some rumors, she abruptly left Hong Kong, abandoning her husband and son. This former steel mill worker, like former Evergrande CEO Xia Haijun, holds a Canadian passport.
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Just like Xia Haijun, she has also gone into hiding overseas, and her current whereabouts are unknown.
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After her disappearance, official handling of the Evergrande issue clearly accelerated.
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On September 15th, Harbour Life Insurance received three approvals for establishment, opening, and taking over Evergrande Life Insurance all in one day. Judging from the equity ratio of Harbour Life Insurance, Shenzhen state-owned assets seemed to be the main force in managing Evergrande's risk.
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Penglian Investment, composed of five Shenzhen state-owned assets including Shenzhen Investment, Shenye, Shenzhen Airport, and Shenzhen Metro, took away 51% of the shares of Harbour Life Insurance, while Guangdong state-owned assets only held 8%.
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The day after Harbour Life Insurance took over, Du Liang, the chairman of Evergrande Wealth, and others were taken into custody by the Shenzhen police. Following that, another important executive of Evergrande also went missing:
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Zhu Jialin.
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In the four years after 2017, Zhu Jialin held several key positions in the financial sector of Evergrande Group:
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President of Evergrande Financial Group, Chairman of Evergrande Life Insurance, Director of Shengjing Bank, and Executive Vice President of Evergrande.
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Before joining Evergrande, he spent 31 years and became the Vice President of China CITIC Bank.
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The Evergrande Wealth, managed by Du Liang and with assets of forty to fifty billion Yuan, was relatively small compared to the major deals Zhu Jialin was involved in.
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In 2015, insurers created an asset-driven liability model through the booming universal insurance, bringing in a large amount of cash flow for companies like Anbang and China Life.
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The Battle of Bao Wan, launched with the support of Foresea Life, also rattled the nerves of all property developers.
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In September of that year, the Chongqing Property Rights Exchange experienced the most intense bidding war in its history.
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After 4 hours and 45 minutes of fierce competition, Evergrande Nanchang defeated rivals such as Longfor and Beijing Bayue with a price of 3.9 billion Yuan and acquired 50% of the shares of China New Grand Eastern Life.
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By the end of the year, China New Grand Eastern Life was renamed Evergrande Life Insurance. Mr. Xu finally had an insurance license like a true capital giant. Evergrande gained unprecedented expansion power.
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After Evergrande Life Insurance, Evergrande continued to increase its stake in Shengjing Bank, becoming the largest shareholder of the largest city commercial bank in Northeast China.
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These financial institutions controlled by Evergrande ultimately became Evergrande's piggy banks. With the support of the financial sector, Evergrande quickly went into a spree.
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The following year, Evergrande made it to the Fortune magazine's list of the world's top 500 companies.
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Zhu Jialin was the core driver behind Evergrande's miracle. In those years, Evergrande Life Insurance set records by selling 10 billion Yuan worth of insurance products in a month and accumulating assets of over a trillion Yuan within three years. By 2020, its total assets reached 241.5 billion Yuan.
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The flow of these funds was easy to trace.
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Including Evergrande Group's 130 billion Yuan strategic investment, many corporate investments were only partially funded by their own capital, with the rest obtained through financing via Evergrande Life Insurance and then reinvested in Evergrande Group in the form of equity investments.
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In 2017, Zhu Jialin even asked Evergrande's top executives to help find shell companies, and then Evergrande Life Insurance borrowed the money to invest in real estate. Many Evergrande executives participated, including Xia Haijun and Ke Peng, who made a fortune through high-interest financing.
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Ke Peng used to be a financial journalist. In 2008, he met the struggling Mr. Xu and joined Evergrande. He might unintentionally engage in bottom fishing with Mr. Xu as Evergrande went public quickly a year later. The company's strong brand and media system were all built by Ke Peng.
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Mr. Xu gave him great trust, and at Evergrande, publicity was a job that was ten thousand times more important than corporate governance.
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Later, Ke Peng served as Chairman of Evergrande Group Shenzhen Company and President of Evergrande Real Estate Group. In his short tenure in charge of Shenzhen, he raised 150 billion Yuan in financing through urban renewal projects, with many financings carrying an annual interest rate of at least 15%.
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Massive off-balance-sheet financing meant that Shenzhen Company had to keep rolling over projects to cover costs. The entire system was like a drug addiction and couldn't stop.
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The first problem Evergrande encountered was also in its financial sector.
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At the end of 2020, when Evergrande failed to return to the A-share market, Xu Jiayin, along with Zhang Jindong, Wang Wenyin, and Yip Yuen-shek, held a grand ceremony with all the strategic investors, announcing that out of the 130 billion Yuan, 86.3 billion Yuan of strategic investment had agreed to be converted into common stock for long-term holding.
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Two months later, Evergrande announced that 125.7 billion Yuan of the 130 billion Yuan war investment had signed agreements to be converted into common stock.
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However, just two months after this announcement, Evergrande Life Insurance's investment in Zhuhai HeYuan Rongtai and Zhuhai HeYuan Rongshi quietly flowed into a subsidiary of Jia Yu New New Investment Group, an inconspicuous subsidiary of Jia Yu New New Investment Group called Jia Yu New New Investment Group (Linyi) Co., Ltd.
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Such cross-investment had occurred many times among suppliers both upstream and downstream of Evergrande, such as Jia Yu, Guangtian, and Baoying.
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Shortly after the failure of Shengjing Bank, high-ranking executives of Shengjing Bank in the Evergrande system, including Zhu Jialin, Pan Darong, Ji Kun, and Qiu Huo, fled one after another.
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But it was too late. They had already opened Pandora's box.
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In early 2022, the first batch of Evergrande executives were detained for their involvement in Shengjing Bank's business. After a provincial company chairman of Evergrande, who had been released on bail, had dinner with another provincial company's top executive. During the meal, he burst into tears.
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There's still a group of people who've benefited from Evergrande's deals and are nowhere to be found.
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On June 9, 2017, a discreet land sale took place involving 370 Mu (Note: 1 Mu= 666 square meter) of residential land and 80 Mu of commercial land, west of Hengfeng Road in Xuchang, Henan.
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During this time, a factory belonging to Xuchang Yufeng Textile, one of China's top 50 cotton textile companies, was still operational on this land.
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The company that secured this land was Xuchang Yufeng Real Estate Company, with Song Lei as its sole shareholder. Interestingly, Song Lei held another position:
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Chairman of a subsidiary of Yufeng Textile.
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Around that period, the prices of nearby land had already surged to 3 million Yuan per Mu. However, Song Lei managed to acquire these 450 Mu of land for a mere 530 million Yuan, translating to slightly over 1 million Yuan per Mu.
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Just a little over a month after Yufeng Real Estate obtained the land, Song Lei transferred the entire company's shares to Xuchang Yuchang Heng. Notably, Yuchang Heng had been established just a week earlier, with Yufeng Textile as one of its two major shareholders.
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The efforts made by Yufeng Textile throughout this process remain unknown.
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Originally, this 450 Mu of land belonged to Yufeng Textile, although it was categorized as industrial land. Yufeng Textile successfully had this industrial land reclassified as residential and commercial land due to their influential connections. Subsequently, it was listed for sale at a significantly lower price.
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In reality, only Yufeng Real Estate participated in the land auction.
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However, even after these endeavors, Yufeng Textile only managed to secure a 37% stake in Yuchang Heng. The principal shareholder of Yuchang Heng was:
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Xuchang Sanchang Industrial Company.
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Sanchang Industrial was established in 1999 and owned an 8.88 million-ton iron ore mine in Zhanghangzhuang, Nanyang of Henan province, This company was headed by the well-known trio from Xuchang:
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Su Yumin, Su Yulin, and Su Yujun.
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Su Yujun was the youngest of the three. One year later, he would become the Chairman of the publicly listed company Tianji Technology and, two years after that, a shareholder of: Evergrande Music.
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In 2010, Evergrande invested 850 million Yuan to establish Evergrande Cultural Industry Group in Beijing, bringing in Song Ke and Gao Xiaosong. This marked the birth of Evergrande Music.
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In September 2019, Evergrande Culture transferred all its shares in Evergrande Music to Beijing Jiayi Tang Company. Subsequently, the shares of Beijing Jiayi Tang were split into two. Su Yujun independently held a 10% stake in Evergrande Music, while the remaining 90% of the shares went to Beijing Aoshitou Investment Holdings, which was renamed from Beijing Jiayi Tang.
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The two shareholders of Beijing Aoshitou held all the shares of Beijing Xinrun Investment. Notably, Beijing Xinrun was also the third-largest shareholder of Tianji Technology.
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Tianji Technology, a company with an annual revenue of only a few hundreds of million Yuan, seemed to have some hidden influence behind it.
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As far back as 2016, the people of Henan province had experienced the Su family's influence. In that year, the South Yang Yihe Xin Company, owned by Su Yi and Su Yulin, spent over 64 million Yuan to acquire a 26,000-square-meter residential plot on Huanghe Road in Nanyang.
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Before long, Evergrande Zhengzhou Company bought a 55% stake in the company for a premium of over 1 hundred million Yuan.
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Clearly, the owner of Yufeng Textile was paying attention to all of this. Shortly after Yufeng Real Estate secured the land, something extraordinary occurred. Evergrande lent 300 million Yuan, covering more than half of the 500 million Yuan land purchase payment for Yufeng Real Estate. Just five months after acquiring the land, Evergrande Zhengzhou Company purchased 75% of Yuchang Heng's shares for:
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1.98 billion Yuan.
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Not only did Evergrande purchase the project at a premium of 1.5 billion Yuan, but the agreement also stipulated that if payments were delayed, Evergrande would charge an annual interest rate of 12%.
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Between acquiring the project and Evergrande's first breaking news of going under four to five years later, Henan companies had already paid 2.1 billion Yuan to Evergrande. This included 1.4 billion Yuan in cash and 700 million Yuan in commercial paper, with nearly 500 million Yuan in unpaid acquisition payments.
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Even after Evergrande's development of the Yue Longtai project on this land stalled, almost half of the land remained undeveloped, worth at least several hundreds of million Yuan.
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Last year, Yuchang Heng organized a trip. Reportedly, after a man in Xuchang had consumed a considerable amount of alcohol, he entrusted Yuchang Heng with the remaining land on the project.
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5.
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In 2009, after Evergrande went public, my friends in the investment banking industry who were acquainted with Mr. Xu Jiayin told me that Mr. Xu would adopt a more conservative approach in the future. At the time, I expressed doubt because I believed that Mr. Xu's personality was one of always wanting to turn one dollar into twenty.
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As it turns out, Mr. Xu has shown no signs of slowing down in his pursuit of "bigger and bigger." In his eyes, as long as he's willing to take risks, the company can continue to grow.
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His arrogance and recklessness have insulted and harmed many people.
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On the evening of December 10, 2021, at 7:34 PM, a young employee from Evergrande Group's marketing center planning team in the eastern region, known as Little You, finished work and left the Guangzhou Evergrande Center.
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Around 3 AM on December 11, he appeared at a location approximately two kilometers south of the Evergrande Center, on the Liede Bridge, and took his own life by jumping off the bridge.
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In a statement issued by Evergrande a few days later, it was mentioned that this young man, a graduate of a prestigious university, probably had not invested in the employee wealth management program.
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Also, towards the end of 2021, in Nantong, Jiangsu, a business partner of Evergrande committed suicide by setting a charcoal brazier on fire inside a rental property.
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The businessman's last name was Cao, and he was a Nantong native. He was only in his thirties at the time of his death. In 2015, he started an advertising and events company. A significant portion of his company's business, approximately seventy to eighty percent, came from Evergrande due to certain internal connections.
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People who have collaborated with Evergrande know that it's a company that only pays after the job is done, often requiring partners to cover all expenses upfront. Once you've been working with Evergrande for more than three years, it becomes challenging to exit the partnership. More and more money get tied up, and if you decide not to cooperate with Evergrande, it becomes even less likely to pay.
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Because Evergrande didn't pay promptly and because Cao didn't have much capital for his business, he had to rely on high-interest loans to maintain his company's cash flow. He had been in business for many years but still hadn't purchased a house, living in rented accommodations in Nantong.
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A former supervisor had warned Cao to be cautious and consider the risk in case Evergrande collapsed. Cao's response was:
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"Evergrande can't possibly collapse."
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In the fall of 2021, Evergrande indeed faced a severe crisis and broke out news of possible going under.
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Cao was unable to get millions of Yuan unpaid paid. During that period, some people occasionally saw him in the streets, bearing an expression of despair and helplessness, as if reality had dealt him a harsh blow.
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Not long after, he used alcohol and charcoal, purchased online, to leave this world inside his rented residence. He left behind a young son who was still in elementary school in his hometown of Rudong County.
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To outsiders, Mr. Xu is known as the "Hermes Guy” or “Brother the waistbelt” for always wearing a flashy H logo belt and China's richest individual, and the builder of a Fortune Global 100 company. He appears self-assured and unshakable.
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However, only those close to him know that this private entrepreneur is filled with sense of insecurity.
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Senior executives at Evergrande during its early years knew about a gift within the company known as the "Evergrande Codex." It wasn't a book but rather a small box made of Italian leather, containing commemorative coins, including gold and silver ones.
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The Evergrande Codex would appear at important occasions and be given to those who needed it. Mr. Xu had grown up with the support of others, raised by his grandmother. He knew from an early age:
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The more circles of friends you have, the safer you feel.
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After a night of heavy drinking, he once asked his subordinates, "How can I leave a lasting legacy?" Later, villagers from Jutai Ridge made a monument for Mr. Xu, with an inscription that read, "Xu Jiayin, nurturing talent for the country and benefiting future generations for the society, is to be leaving a lasting legacy.”
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Indeed, he will be remembered for many years. However, not in the way one might expect.
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That kind of play from Chinese literatures - watching him build a grand mansion, entertaining guests, and then watching his mansion collapse - has kept happening for thousands of years.
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(The end)