Shan Weijian, co-founder of PAG. Credit: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
From surviving the Cultural Revolution to ascending the highest echelons of the financial industry, Shan Weijian's savvy has carried him far. But the co-founder of PAG, one of Asia’s largest private equity firms, made headlines recently after his criticism of China’s management of the economy and its zero-Covid strategy found its way into the Financial Times.
In a leaked video of a private meeting with PAG’s fund investors, Shan is quoted as describing the Chinese economy as “in the worst shape in the past 30 years,” and compares it to “the U.S. and Europe in 2008.”
Shan, who rarely makes public statements critical of Chinese government policies, is now in the spotlight just as PAG prepares to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This also comes at a time when Beijing has pledged to ‘fight’ any comments that doubt its pandemic policies and begun to punish some outspoken critics.
Shan and PAG don’t normally shy away from a fight, having bee
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