New York Times on Wang Shi

Wang Shi is one of the keynote speakers at the International Sustainable Cities Forum.

New York Times featured Wang Shi last year. This is the story:

ON A COLD JANUARY AFTERNOON, several hundred Chinese converged on a bookstore in a Beijing shopping center called the Creative Zone. As U2’s anthem “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” swelled in the background, their eyes were drawn to a video montage of a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard projected onto a wall behind a raised stage. As the music faded, the man himself appeared, dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket, and the audience fell into a reverential hush.

This was Wang Shi. A 58-year-old tycoon-adventurer in the mold of Sir Richard Branson, he had come to promote his second book, in which he retraces the journey of a seventh-century Buddhist monk across China, Central Asia and India. But the standing-room-only audience, most of them migrants and professionals half his age, seemed more interested in being enlightened about the secrets of his financial success than in hearing about his travels.

Wang is the founder and chairman of China Vanke Company, the largest housing developer in China and soon, perhaps, the world. Though virtually unknown in the West, the former People’s Liberation Army soldier has become a hero in his homeland. His story — a poor migrant leaps to the top of China’s most transformative industry — encapsulates not only the rise of his ambitious nation but also the aspirations of China’s growing middle class. As Wang talked to the crowd about building his giant real estate company, the audience leaned forward expectantly. “You have to let go, to make a choice,” he told them. “Find one important thing, concentrate on it and you’ll reach your goal.”

Tags: china, international sustainable cities forum, property, united states, vanke, wang shi