China's answer to King Midas has lost the golden touch. Wang Jianlin, head of the Dalian Wanda group, was the richest man in China until his stock shares plummeted and rules on moving cash out of the country tightened. Suddenly, large chunks of his empire are up for sale, including his much-touted film studio and a vast network of cinema-studded shopping malls — the crown jewels of the reigning real estate king.
Wang had a good run for the money, basking in the glow of compliant media coverage in a gilded quest to prove that bigger is better: He poured billions into the world's biggest theme park, the world's biggest movie studio, the biggest film distributor and so on. He bought AMC, a movie theater chain with a dominant share of the U.S. market, and paid $3.5 billion for Legendary Pictures in a pricey attempt to acquire some Hollywood creative mojo. He put another billion in play in a luxury condo project with a prestigious Beverly Hills address, all this in addition to strategically located malls and entertainment venues across the length and breadth of China, including theme parks meant to rival, if not destroy, the foreign upstart known as Disneyworld that opened to great fanfare in Shanghai.
It's probably only human that Wang got hit with hubris as he gobbled up brand-name companies and prestigious real estate holdings, but he also became a victim of his own hype even as he hyped it.