The Wanda Way

A Chinese Rockefeller

Now one of China’s titans of industry, Wang Jianlin was born in 1954. At age 15, he joined the Red Army. He was one of few soldiers to complete a snowy 1,000-km march, and he became a regimental officer while still in his 20s. When he became an entrepreneur, he used the lessons about perseverance that he learned on that arduous hike.

Wang aspired to become a general, but in 1986, as China opened its economy, his ambitions turned to business. He left the military and moved into the private sector. In 1988, he took over a real estate company on the brink of insolvency. He cleaned up such sloppy practices as paying workers for phantom overtime and allowing company drivers to moonlight during business hours.

This venture was the basis of Wang’s corporation, the Wanda Group, which marketed properties in part by promising not to steal from consumers as other firms were doing. In the early days of China’s private housing market, construction standards were shoddy and sellers lied about apartment sizes. Wang promised refunds to buyers who were unhappy. This approach reflected his affinity for Confucian ideology to stress personal integrity.