The guanxi game has defined China's modern business culture — and no one played it better than Xu Jiayin, the CEO of Evergrande. Now, however, the game seems to have changed on him.
In 2002, when Xu Jiayin wanted to take his property business public for the first time, he teamed up with a company linked to the brother of Wen Jiabao, who was about to take over as China’s premier. Years later, after his company, Evergrande, had grown into China’s second largest property developer, three Hong Kong billionaires who Xu played poker with gave him cash infusions to help settle some debts. When Xu took a wild leap into electric vehicles, he pitched the project to Jack Ma at a dinner party — and ended up securing an investment from Ma’s fund. And then last year, in a bid to save his increasingly indebted company, Xu convinced the CEO of a Chinese retail conglomerate not to collect the $3 billion that Evergrande owed him.
In other words, Xu — who is also known by his Cantonese name, Hui Ka Yan — has a knack for convincing important people to back him and then catch him when he falls. In Chinese business culture, this talent for cultivating personal rel
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