Xu Jiayin

Early Life

Xu Jiayin (Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese romanisation) was born in 1958 in a village in Taikang County, Zhoukou, Henan Province. According to a 2013 profile in Global People, his mother died when he was one and he was raised by his grandmother and father; after high school he drove a tractor in his village, failed the first college entrance examination after its restoration in 1977, and the following year, 1978, entered the metallurgy department of the Wuhan Iron and Steel Institute (now Wuhan University of Science and Technology) with one of the top three scores in Zhoukou.

After graduating in 1982 he was assigned to the Wuyang Iron and Steel Works in Henan. According to the same profile, two months after arriving he drew up a set of "300 production management rules" and was promoted to workshop director the following year; he later brought these management methods to Evergrande.

Moving South and Founding Evergrande

In 1992 Xu left the Wuyang steelworks for Shenzhen, where he became a salesman at a trading company; from 1994 he was in charge of developing the Zhudao Garden project in Guangzhou, which, according to Jiemian, earned the company about RMB 200 million within two or three years. In 1996 he founded Evergrande in Guangzhou (Global People gives 1997); its first project, Jinbi Garden, was started, sold and sold out within the same year on a strategy of small units, low prices and low costs. Evergrande thereafter pursued a strategy of "high debt, high growth", buying land on a large scale in second-tier cities and building and selling quickly.

In early 2008 Evergrande's first attempt to list in Hong Kong was shelved when the global financial crisis struck, leaving it short of funds; according to Global People, Xu then brought in money from investors including Cheng Yu-tung through private placements. On 5 November 2009 Evergrande Real Estate listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with a closing market value of HK$70.5 billion that day, and Xu, worth HK$48 billion, became mainland China's richest person for the first time. In 2016 Evergrande became the largest property developer by sales, and in 2017 Xu again became China's richest person, with a fortune of RMB 290 billion. He was a member of the 13th National Committee of the CPPCC (on its Economic Affairs Committee); his name was absent from the list of members of the 14th National Committee published in January 2023.

Football and Diversification

In 2010 Xu paid RMB 100 million for the Guangzhou football club, which had just been relegated from the Chinese Super League, renaming it Guangzhou Evergrande; he spent heavily on national-team players and foreign stars and in 2012 hired the Italian coach Marcello Lippi. In 2015 the club listed on the NEEQ ("New Third Board"), billed as "Asia's first football stock". Evergrande also moved into bottled water (Evergrande Spring), finance, health and wellness, and cultural tourism, and from 2018 invested heavily in electric vehicles — at least RMB 47.4 billion, according to Jiemian — with Evergrande Auto losing RMB 7.675 billion in 2020.

Debt Crisis

In September 2020 a report from Evergrande to the Guangdong provincial government circulated online, asking for support for its backdoor listing on the mainland A-share market and warning that failure to complete it by 31 January 2021 could break its funding chain; Evergrande called it a rumour at the time. That November Evergrande abandoned the A-share plan, and most strategic investors agreed to keep their shares. Under the new "three red lines" financing rules, overdue commercial bills at Evergrande came to light in June 2021; on 19 July China Guangfa Bank applied to freeze Evergrande assets, and stalled projects, delayed repayment of wealth management products and dollar-bond defaults followed. On 3 December 2021 Evergrande announced it might be unable to meet its guarantee obligations, and the Guangdong government summoned Xu that evening and sent a working group to Evergrande Real Estate Group. According to material provided by Evergrande, between July and November 2021 Xu contributed about RMB 7 billion to the company by pledging shares and selling homes in Hong Kong and a private jet.

Investigation and Conviction

On 28 September 2023 Evergrande announced that Xu had been placed under compulsory measures in accordance with the law on suspicion of criminal offences. In January 2024 the Hong Kong High Court ordered China Evergrande to be wound up. In May 2024 the China Securities Regulatory Commission found that Hengda Real Estate had inflated its revenue and profits in 2019–2020 and fraudulently issued bonds; it fined Xu, then its chairman and actual controller, RMB 47 million and banned him from the securities market for life.

On 20 August 2026 the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court found at first instance that between 2016 and 2021 Evergrande Group, Hengda Real Estate and Xu had inflated assets and concealed liabilities through sustained, large-scale financial fraud, and had gained control of financial institutions through bribery and illegally diverted credit and insurance funds. Convicted of illegally absorbing public deposits, fund-raising fraud, illegal granting of loans, fraudulent issuance of securities, unlawful disclosure of important information, unit bribery, illegal use of funds and embezzlement, Xu was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprivation of political rights for life and confiscation of all his personal property.