Lucas Wilson had only been at his new job for four weeks when he traveled from Australia to the Spanish island of Mallorca to host a private dinner for 24 luxury yacht owners. As the sun set over the bay where the Sunseeker yachts were moored, their owners — British and American tech entrepreneurs and restaurateurs — filed in for dinner at La Fortaleza, the 400-year-old fortress on the cliff.
“My job was literally to travel the world, looking for wealthy people,” Wilson recalled, looking back.
It was April 2016, and Wilson had just joined Dalian Wanda Group, the private sector Chinese conglomerate that was expanding aggressively overseas. At that point, Wanda had spent more than $10 billion scooping up marquee global brands in sports and entertainment — including Sunseeker, AMC theaters, Ironman Group, the Atlético de Madrid soccer team, and Legendary Entertainment, the American film and TV production company. Wanda had become a symbol of a newly confident China.
Wi
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
When Ken Wilcox, a former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, moved to Shanghai in 2011, he was optimistic and eager to start up the bank's new joint venture in China. A decade later, however, he is extremely cynical about U.S. business interests in China. While analysts will, rightly, be debating SVB's missteps in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, Wilcox insists the bank's challenges in China should not be overlooked.
The former secretary of state talks about how the Trump administration changed U.S.-China relations; why he accused Beijing of genocide in Xinjiang; and why U.S. politicians should visit Taiwan.