Covering Asia’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, and his global ambitions

Wang Jianlin, the founder and chairman of Dalian Wang Group, raised some eyebrows when he inked a $2.6 billion deal with the big but struggling AMC Entertainment Holdings in May 2012. The commercial real estate developer’s first overseas acquisition would make itself one of the largest cinema owners in the world. However, as the U.S. movie market becomes saturated amid the rise of Netflix and other online streaming services, some questioned how the Chinese company would manage AMC down the road.

Liyan Chan, a writer at Forbes, decided to dig deeper into Wang’s ambition and why he chose to invest in the theatrical exhibition business.

“I pitched the story for Forbes’s billionaires issue because it’s a pretty big year for Wang given his first overseas investment,” Chan said. “His jump in wealth is phenomenal.”

The AMC project had been negotiated for over two years due to the complexity of local laws and management issues, according to Wang’s speech at Harvard Business School. He began to tap luxury hotel and theme parks after the AMC deal.

After Dalian Wanda went public with its real estate and cinema lines by the end of 2014, Wang’s fortune jumped significantly. His wealth reached $37.5 billion, the Forbes article show, overtaking Li Ka Shing as the richest man in Asia.

Chan reached out to Wang’s PR agency but it took her a long time to secure an interview.

“PR people in China are more used to the Chinese style of media,” she said, citing their request for a list of interview questions in advance. That vastly differs from the norm in the U.S., where journalists provide a general idea of the interview topics (if demanded).

Chan did not bow down to the PR’s request, but clarified that her focus ison Wang’s new investment in Hollywood and his push to go global. It took a month before Wang’s PR finally accepted Chan’s interview request and put her on Wang’s calendar.

“Eventually I had to narrow down the issues I’m interested in and negotiated,” she said.

The journalist was given a 15 minutes sit-down interview during Wang’s visit to New York City late March. She said she knew that Wang is very politically connected (he was born with a red spoon), but at that time The New York Times haven’t yet released its scathing story on the Chinese politicians’ stakes in Dalian Wanda.

“I just wish the NYT story had come out before met him… It’d have been interesting to hear him respond,” said Chan, though she suspects she’ll get a response similar to the tycoon’s later rebuttal that his company’s rapid growth does not involve corruption.

Chan asked Wang to compare the American way of doing business versus the Chinese way of doing business, as well as Wang’s foray into ecommerce.

In August 2014, Wang and Tencent announced a 814 million e-commerce joint venture with Baidu, allowing Wanda to become the biggest online-to-offline e-commerce platform in the world.

“I pushed him on people’s doubt surround his online and offline model,” Chan said, adding that Internet juggernauts such as Alibaba have touted the future of ecommerce.

Wang told Forbes that he is targeting entertainment and sports, which are not high-growth industries but can be valuable for China’s burgeoning middle class.

The sit-down and photo shoot totaled an hour and half, which Wang’s PR said was the longest the billionaire ever took with foreign media. Though that is comparatively short with what Forbes’ reporters usually spend on previous billionaires coverage, Chan said Wang carried a cover story potential, which the PR took as a way to hedge against the interview length.

Chan described Wang as a savvy and talkative interviewee.

“He’s very good at describing his business in a positive light but he’s also soft spoken, which was very interesting to me,” she said.

Chan’s lede focused on the AMC Empire Theatre because that is the most iconic deal and probably how most Americans got to know the Chinese billionaire. She then explained the scope of Wanda’s business and his bolder goals in growing his international presence. The key was just to explain the different segments (real estate, Hollywood, theatre) clearly but also tie them to a unifying theme of his rationale, Chan said.

While Wang’s PR team was upset that the billionaire did not make it to the cover at the end (it was never guaranteed), Chan said there wasn’t any pushback from the company after the profile was published..

“They were happy that I didn’t have more info on Wang’s political ties nor made that the focus of my story,” she said. “The funny thing is that Forbes China, our licensee, self censored.”

The Chinese version did not contain the paragraph on the importance of guanxi and media scrutiny on Wang’s rise, citing The New York Times’s investigation.

Forbes Media LLC does not oversee China operations, so tweaking the brand’s content is up to the licensing partners’s discretion.