As China’s richest shopping mall tycoon strides down the hall in a sharp pinstripe suit, it is hard to imagine him as a teenage soldier who didn’t have enough to eat.
But Wang Jianlin, the founder and chairman of real estate group Dalian Wanda, smiles as he describes the strategies he once used to stave off hunger. “In the early days we really had to scramble to eat,” he says, resting a hand on his silver-coloured tea mug. “The hardship then was unimaginable.” When food was available, he used to half-fill his rice bowl on his first time through the canteen queue so that he could eat it quickly enough to go back for seconds before the food ran out. “That experience helped shape my character, taught me never to give up and never bow your head to hardship,” he says, in a lisping accent that hints at his Sichuan birthplace.
But Mr Wang, China’s sixth-richest man, lives in a very different world now. His $35bn, 55,000-employee business is a household name in China, where its mixed use “Wanda Plaza” developments are found in more than 60 cities. With company revenues estimated to grow at a rate of at least 30 per cent a year, he is now going global, starting with the $2.6bn purchase last week of AMC Theatres, the second-largest cinema chain in the US. When the deal is completed it will create the world’s largest cinema company by revenues and be the biggest US acquisition ever by a private Chinese company.