Wang Shi is restricted, Yu Liang loses order, Zhu Xu pursues salary: The end and reckoning of Vanke's era of professional managers | [Deep Thinking]

Ask AI · What Is the Root Cause of Vanke’s Governance Collapse, from Zhu Xu the Savior to Being Pursued for Wage Repayment?

《Thinking Deep Dive Research Group》

In March 2026, the major information releases by Vanke in succession stirred the entire capital market and the real estate industry. As confirmed by multiple authoritative sources and regulatory-related developments: Vanke founder Wang Shi, due to responsibilities related to the company’s historical operations and governance, was put under actual exit restrictions, and his travel to continuously attend the United Nations Climate Conference for 16 years was completely cut off; former Chairman Yu Liang, after reaching retirement age in January 2026, was placed in a state of practical action restrictions, no longer appeared publicly, and related social activities came to a complete halt; the company’s former Secretary to the Board and A-share “top” Secretary Zhu Xu was formally required to refund in full all salary and performance bonuses for four years from 2021 to 2024, involving an amount of nearly 100 million yuan; at the same time, the former President Zhu Jiusheng was taken with criminal coercive measures in October 2025, and the former Chairman Xin Jie was taken away for investigation just 9 months after taking office. Senior executives and project heads in Vanke regions such as Shenzhen, Sichuan, and Yunnan were implicated one after another. A full-layer accountability storm targeting Vanke’s professional manager team was officially fully implemented.

Once hailed as a benchmark for Chinese real estate developers and a model of A-share corporate governance, within just a few years this company fell from industry top-tier into a predicament of losses amounting to hundreds of billions and governance collapse. In such a brutal way, the professional manager model created by Wang Shi and carried on by Yu Liang walked toward its final end.

I. Zhu Xu: From the God of the Bao-Vanke Dispute to a Fate Reversal—Pursued for Repayment of Nearly 100 Million Yuan in Pay

Zhu Xu’s career path is the most representative snapshot of Vanke’s era of professional managers. Her moments of brilliance and her final curtain fall are deeply tied to Vanke’s fate.

In 2016, Vanke was mired in the Bao-Vanke dispute, the battle for equity control grew intensely heated, and management’s control was in jeopardy. Zhu Xu was called in at a critical moment to assume the role of Secretary to the Board. At that time, a reorganization vote at Vanke’s board of directors regarding the introduction of the Shenzhen Metro became the key battle that would decide the company’s survival and demise. After 11 directors voted, 7 voted in favor, 3 against, and 1 abstained. The required two-thirds statutory approval threshold was not met; the atmosphere at the scene fell into dead silence, and Vanke’s management was on the verge of losing control.

At this moment, the independent director who abstained stated candidly that there was a conflict of interest. Relying on her years of deep expertise in capital markets, Zhu Xu precisely seized the core of the rules and calmly proposed that this independent director should recuse from the voting rather than abstain. This instantly changed the voting base: the effective number of voters dropped from 11 to 10, and the 7 votes in favor just crossed the two-thirds red line. The reorganization proposal passed in a nail-biting way, securing a crucial turning point for Vanke to bring in the Shenzhen Metro and resolve the crisis over control. This move made Zhu Xu a legend in one stroke, recognized as a top-tier Secretary to the Board in A-shares. After that, for many years she steadily remained in the position of the “most expensive female Secretary to the Board in A-shares.” Over the four years from 2021 to 2024, her compensation, bonuses, and various incentives totaled over 10 million yuan, serving as a benchmark for high pay for professional managers.

But who could have anticipated that this Secretary, who rose to fame by defending the rules, would ultimately be required to fully claw back all pay for those four years because of Vanke’s governance disorder and performance collapse. From her pivotal rescue in the Bao-Vanke dispute to the current clawback of nearly 100 million yuan in compensation, Zhu Xu’s fate reversal precisely proves the entire process of responsibility clarification within Vanke’s professional manager team—from misalignment between rights and responsibilities to the final reckoning of accountability.

II. Yu Liang and Core Senior Executives: From Helmsman to One Who Creates Disorder—The Cruel Reality of Full-Scale Accountability for Everyone

As the successor to Wang Shi and the helmsman of Vanke, Yu Liang took over the core of Vanke’s professional manager model and also became the central target of this accountability storm.

After Wang Shi stepped back, Yu Liang led Vanke for many years. He once helped Vanke maintain its position as a leading real estate company and brought the advantages of the professional manager system into full play to the extreme. At that time, Vanke’s management had clearly defined rights and responsibilities and operated with high efficiency, becoming a model for the entire industry to learn from. But with the real estate industry going downhill, Vanke’s operating strategy under Yu Liang’s leadership repeatedly went astray. The management team gradually fell into a dilemma where high salaries were completely disconnected from performance, and personal interests were severed from shareholders’ interests. In 2024, Vanke suffered its first massive loss in 34 years since listing. In 2025, losses further expanded; over two years, total cumulative losses exceeded 100 billion yuan. Yet the core management continued to collect sky-high compensation. The imbalance of rights and responsibilities in the professional manager team was thoroughly exposed.

Now that Yu Liang has retired and is under restricted actions, he has become a hallmark signal of disorder within Vanke’s professional manager team. The criminal detention of former President Zhu Jiusheng and the investigation of former Chairman Xin Jie have further caused the group’s core management to collapse completely. Going further down, Shenzhen Vanke’s former general manager Zhang Haitao was sentenced for bribery; Sichuan Vanke’s former chairman Cheng Lindong was involved in a case and sentenced; Vanke Yunnan’s former general manager Wang Runchuan, and Shenzhen Zhen Shan Fu project’s general manager Zhang Yong, among more than ten regional and project executives, were investigated one after another. From the helmsman at the group level to the people in charge on the front line, the entire chain was implicated—completely ripping open the hidden corners where Vanke’s professional manager team had long been marked by governance irregularities and interest entanglements.

III. Shenzhen Metro Entering the Picture: From White-Clad Knight to Acquirer—Trillions in Funding Cannot Reverse the Downturn

In 2017, Shenzhen Metro invested 66.4 billion yuan to take over Vanke, ending the Bao-Vanke dispute in the role of a “white-clad knight.” At that time, it promised to do only financial investment and not interfere with Vanke’s day-to-day operations, becoming the guardian of Vanke’s professional manager model.

But this balance was ultimately broken by Vanke’s ongoing continued collapse. After Shenzhen Metro entered the picture, it did not immediately change Vanke’s governance structure and still allowed the professional manager team to operate. Yet Vanke’s performance declined year by year and eventually fell into the quagmire of massive losses amounting to hundreds of billions. As of March 2026, Vanke’s total market value on the A-share market is only about 52 billion yuan. Meanwhile, the cumulative losses in 2024–2025 have already reached 1314.78 billion yuan, with the loss amount being more than 2.5 times the current market value. In 2024, Vanke’s net loss attributable to the parent company was 494.78 billion yuan; in 2025, the company is expected to incur a loss of 820 billion yuan. Daily losses exceeded 2.2 billion yuan, setting a record for losses among A-share real estate companies.

Behind the comprehensive financial collapse was the complete exhaustion of liquidity. By the end of the third quarter of 2025, Vanke’s interest-bearing liabilities had reached 3629 billion yuan. Of this, short-term debts due within one year totaled 1554 billion yuan, while the cash and cash equivalents on the books were only 657 billion yuan. The cash-to-short-term-debt ratio was merely 0.43, and the funding gap exceeded 900 billion yuan. The asset-liability ratio climbed to 73.51%, and the gross margin of the development business fell to 2.0%, leaving it almost without profit.

Facing a life-and-death crisis, Shenzhen Metro had to shift from a financial investor to a “firefighting party.” By early 2026, it had cumulatively provided more than 314 billion yuan in low-interest loans to Vanke (with interest rates as low as 2.34%), used specifically for debt repayment and keeping projects on track for delivery. It even pledged 57% of the equity of Vanke’s highest-quality asset Vanke Cloud to enhance credit. But in the face of losses of hundreds of billions and debts totaling several trillion, Shenzhen Metro’s capital infusions were like a drop in the bucket. It could only passively take over comprehensively. Shenzhen Metro executives fully entered the core decision-making level, completely replacing the original professional manager team. The professional manager autonomy model that Wang Shi built and insisted on for years had lost its ground for survival.

IV. The Vanke Buildings Still Stand, Yet the Loneliness of Governance Collapse Cannot Be Hidden

Walking through Vanke communities and developments across major cities nationwide, you can still feel the product DNA of this long-established real estate company. Vanke communities in Shanghai have well-organized landscaping and orderly property services; in Shenzhen, the Vanke headquarters tower stands in the core of the CBD, with spotless glass curtain walls. The delivered Vanke projects in Guangzhou and Hangzhou still remain as quality representatives in their respective regions.

But while the buildings remain, everything about personnel has changed completely. Inside the Shenzhen Vanke headquarters building, the office areas of the former core executive team have long since changed hands. In the corridors, there are fewer hurried footsteps of the professional manager team, and more of a sense of silence. At Vanke project construction sites in various places, work has not stopped, yet the exuberance of the past is missing. In casual conversations between employees and property owners, there are nothing but feelings about the company’s upheaval. Those quality projects created by Vanke’s professional manager team still stand in cities, but the teams that built them—due to governance disorder and a misbalance of rights and responsibilities—have fallen into a situation of accountability for everyone, forming a strong contrast.

This kind of scene of desolation is precisely a true reflection of the real end of Vanke’s professional manager era: the physical buildings are still there, but the governance foundation that supports the enterprise has already completely collapsed. The once-proud professional manager system, under circumstances of a lack of effective constraints and severe misalignment of interests and responsibilities, ultimately dragged down this industry heavyweight.

V. Final Reckoning: The Return of Rights and Responsibilities Equality, and the Complete End of an Era

Vanke’s full-layer accountability this time is by no means a simple reshuffling of personnel. It is a thorough settlement of the high-salary, no-accountability model under professional managers, and also a redefinition by the capital market and the real estate industry of the logic of corporate governance.

For a long time, Vanke’s professional manager team held top-tier salaries in the industry, yet ignored shareholders’ interests in business decision-making. They expanded blindly and conducted off-balance-sheet operations, forming hidden interest channels such as Pengjin Trust, putting personal interests above the company and shareholders’ interests. When performance was going up, management split the high salaries and incentives; when performance collapsed, however, the consequences were borne by the company, shareholders, and even all employees. This distorted governance model, in the end, is inevitably destined to come to an end.

Zhu Xu’s nearly 100 million yuan in compensation being pursued for repayment, Yu Liang’s restricted actions, and the involvement of senior executives such as Zhu Jiusheng and Xin Jie all mark the complete end of Vanke’s professional manager era. After Shenzhen Metro’s comprehensive takeover, Vanke implemented an entirely new governance and compensation mechanism. It fully broke the previous pattern of high salaries without responsibility, tightly linked performance with compensation and responsibility with power, returning to the essence of corporate governance.

This turning point at Vanke has sounded a warning bell for the entire capital market: any power detached from responsibility constraints and any high salary detached from performance support cannot last long. The era of professional managers pioneered by Wang Shi was once a benchmark for Chinese corporate governance, but it came to an end later due to the imbalance of rights and responsibilities and the misalignment of interests. This is not only a company’s rise and fall; it is also a profound mirror reflecting how corporate governance in China moves toward maturity and the full return of the principle of equality of rights and responsibilities. Those quiet Vanke buildings both witness the glory of an era and engrave the lessons from the end of the next.

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