Xiao Jianhua Credit: Chinese University of Hong Kong
Huaxia Life Insurance logo
Three and a half years ago, in the wee hours of the night, the billionaire financier Xiao Jianhua was led out of the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong in a wheelchair, with a sheet draped over his head, and whisked across the border into China.
He has not been heard from since, and is believed to be detained by the Chinese government under a form of house arrest in Shanghai.
But in a dramatic move Friday, China seized control of his business empire, assets held by his flagship Tomorrow Group, a sprawling and secretive financial conglomerate that consists of banks, brokerages, insurance and trust companies, publicly traded firms and investment vehicles that together were once worth more than $100 billion, according to his former aides.
Xiao was one of the world’s richest men — and one of the few businessmen to command a full suite of licenses to do business in China’s highly regulated market for financial services. How that financial empi
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.
Zhongguancun, a neighborhood in Beijing, has long been called 'China's Silicon Valley.' But after achieving remarkable success, Zhongguancun is now undergoing something of a makeover as China attempts to control what type of innovation happens there. Can Beijing reinvent Zhongguancun while still replicating its past success?
