Xu Jiayin: the tycoon behind Evergrande

Xu Jiayin became a wheeler-dealer in China’s muddled transition to capitalism and his connections helped him to enormous riches. Now, he seems to have run out of luck… and friends in high places.

Xu Jiayin, chairman of Evergrande
(Image credit: © Shutterstock)

In his heyday, Xu Jiayin was the poster boy of China’s “crazy rich” – the personification of the country’s uneasy transition to “freewheeling dealmaking” within an authoritarian system, says SupChina, a US-based news platform. In 2012, he rocked up to China’s annual legislative conference wearing a flashy gold-buckled Hermès belt – “the priciest belt for the largest Communist gathering in the world”. He soon acquired internet stardom and the catchy nickname “belt brother”.

China’s Enron

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.