Recently, a corruption storm has swept through China’s real estate giant Vanke Group. It started with the former Chairman of the Board, Yu Liang, going missing, followed by reports on March 30 that many big shots were taken away for investigation, causing anxiety among the current executives at Vanke.
According to reports from “Sina Finance” on March 30, there were internal messages from the Southwest Vanke revealing that the former General Manager of Guiyang Vanke, Wu Zhongyou, was taken away for investigation. At the same time, the former secretary of the Vanke Board and former General Manager of Yunnan Vanke, Wang Runchuan, were also taken away for questioning.
Worth noting is that Wu Zhongyou had left Guiyang Vanke several years ago, yet he was still held accountable. Over a decade ago, he had been involved in many major projects in collaboration with local state-owned enterprises in Guiyang, thinking he had landed safely, only to have his past actions resurface for settlement.
Wang Runchuan was a key figure favored by Yu Liang and had served as the Assistant General Manager of Vanke Chongqing Company and then as the General Manager of Yunnan Vanke since July 2015. During his five-year tenure, Wang Runchuan increased the sales of Yunnan Vanke from 2 billion to nearly 20 billion yuan. He left in 2024 citing further studies in Hong Kong but ultimately could not escape being taken away for investigation. Insiders revealed that he was implicated in some cooperation issues from more than a decade ago at Vanke.
Furthermore, “Market News” reported that the operator of the Shenzhen Vanke Zhen Mountain Palace project was also recently taken away due to financial operation issues related to “BoShang Capital Management.”
According to incomplete statistics, more than 25 core executives of Vanke have either resigned or been taken away. Among them, the former Chairman of Vanke Group, Xin Jie, who took over from Yu Liang in January 2025, was taken away less than a year later in September of the same year. The former President and CEO of Vanke Group, Zhu Jiusheng, was taken into criminal custody in October 2025.
Former Acting General Manager of Vanke Shenzhen, Zhang Haitao, was sentenced to eight years in prison in December 2022 for non-government bribery. The former Chairman of Chengdu Area Core Project (Meizhou Properties) of Vanke Sichuan, Cheng Lindong, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in April 2024 for bribery. Xiao Jing, former General Manager of Vanke Jinan, was taken away by Shandong police in April 2024. Li Shengyang, former General Manager of Vanke Southern Regional City Renewal, was taken away by Foshan police in May 2023. He Zhuo, Executive Director and General Manager of BoShang Capital Management, was placed under control by authorities in early 2025.
Reportedly, from 2022 to March 2026, at least 13 core executives have been under investigation, sentenced, or criminally detained.
In addition, according to “Caixin Net” on January 27, the former Chairman of Vanke Group, Yu Liang, seems to have been missing for half a month. Meanwhile, the founder, Wang Shi, although retired long ago, now appears to be facing restrictions on leaving the country. Since the end of 2024, Vanke has tightened controls on the outbound movements of core executives, with even Wang Shi’s wife, Tian Pujun, being “restricted” temporarily due to the needs of attending to their daughter in Japan.
Industry sources quoted in reports revealed that former executives of Vanke are now “lining up” for interviews, as the internal audit department has launched a more than 10-year inspection “performance.”
Vanke Group was once considered the “top student” of China’s real estate industry, taking 11 years to transition from a leading industry player to a trillion-yuan level real estate enterprise. However, in 2024, it faced its first annual loss since going public. Vanke’s performance forecast for 2025 showed a net loss of approximately 49.478 billion yuan in 2024, which further expanded to 82 billion yuan in 2025, accumulating a total loss of 131.48 billion yuan over two years, with a gross profit margin dropping to 2%.
As of the end of the third quarter of 2025, Vanke’s total liabilities amounted to 872.9 billion yuan, with short-term interest-bearing debts exceeding 150 billion yuan, resulting in immense liquidity pressure. The company’s cash and cash equivalents were only 60.388 billion yuan, while short-term borrowings and non-current liabilities due within one year reached 151.4 billion yuan, leaving a funding gap of over 90 billion yuan.
To alleviate Vanke’s liquidity crisis, the major shareholder, Shenzhen Metro Group, has provided over 30 billion yuan in loans to Vanke since 2025.
Furthermore, rumors from the market suggest that core executives of Vanke have been asked to return all their salaries from 2021 to 2024, covering all core executives of Vanke over the past four years. Retired former Chairman of the Board, Yu Liang, refunded 6 million yuan, while former President Zhu Jiusheng, who has faced enforcement measures, refunded 17 million yuan, and former Board Secretary Zhu Xu refunded 10 million yuan, among others.
In response to this, Chinese affairs scholar and current affairs commentator Wang He, in an interview with Epoch Times, mentioned that the market environment in China is very distorted, making it difficult for many companies to adhere to ethics. He mentioned that China’s entire system forces companies to engage in misconduct, particularly in the real estate sector, where corruption runs deep. The trouble faced by Vanke’s executives was seen as inevitable, considering the large hole that has emerged, prompting the Communist Party to clean up the situation and forcing these individuals to “pay back” what they had done wrong.
He believed that the Communist Party’s scrutiny of Vanke would likely continue for a long time, but compared to what Evergrande faced, the Party’s treatment of Vanke was relatively lighter.
Professor Sun Guoxiang from the Department of International Affairs and Business at Nanhua University in Taiwan told Epoch Times that Vanke was no longer a purely private autonomous company as Shenzhen Metro Group had become its largest shareholder, holding 27.18% of the shares, with support exceeding 30 billion yuan. The Vanke Board openly stated in early 2025 that it aimed to enhance its operational management by leveraging the resources of major shareholders, suggesting that personnel investigations and company protection may be happening simultaneously, with political accountability, governance changes, and financial stability provided by state assets. He highlighted that the situation might lead to three consequences: restraining executives from engaging in off-balance sheet financing, leading to a more conservative approach by enterprises, slowing project disposal; a more limited cooperation between local governments and private real estate enterprises, with resources potentially concentrating on state-backed platforms in the future; and the market further believing that the next stage for Chinese real estate is not self-rescue but administrative settlements, state asset rescue, and debt restructuring—possibly providing some stability to local credit but posing new challenges to private real estate confidence and private investment intentions.
He said, “Vanke’s sensitivity lies in the fact that it was once seen as one of the industry’s top performers, but even it has reached the steps of extending deadlines, blood transfusions, and restructuring, sending a very strong signal to the market.”