At 75, Wang Shi — the founder of Vanke and once the undisputed 'godfather' of China’s property industry — has been pulled back into public view by a very 21st‑century drama: rumours of a marital split and viral clips that make him look diminished. He has responded with a weary shrug, calling such speculation "the norm in the attention economy" and saying he need not parade public appearances with his younger wife. Yet the visual record tells a different story: his partner Tian Pujun has deleted joint photographs from social media, their shared corporate holdings have fallen from five entities to one, and footage of the pair in public interviews conveys an awkward emotional distance.
The imagery is striking. In a televised conversation with entrepreneur Duan Yongping, Wang appears frail and even disguised — wearing a wig and trainers — while Tian sits alert and admiring toward Duan but cool and critical when she looks at Wang. In another clip she bristles when asked what time she will return home, leaving Wang to explain himself with a startled, almost apologetic air. For an executive once celebrated for decisive leadership and moral rectitude, these moments read as humiliation rather than controversy.
Wang’s trajectory helps explain why. He began in the 1980s selling corn and other consumer goods before founding Vanke; the company moved into real estate in 1988 and went public within a few years, growing into one of China’s largest property developers. Wang cultivated an intellectual persona — publishing a company journal, praising market institutions and rejecting bribery — and became a mentor figure to a generation of managers. At his peak Vanke’s sales surged into the hundreds of billions of yuan and Wang’s name became synonomous with China’s boom in urban housing.
The 2015 upheaval known in Chinese business circles as the Vanke control struggle marked a turning point. Wang lost a power contest that effectively ended his control of the company he built and precipitated his exit from the board. Since then he has chased a second act: founding a new group focused on carbon‑neutral communities, attempting a Hong Kong listing that faltered, dabbling in livestream selling and short video, and even endorsing luxury bird’s‑nest products that sold poorly. Those efforts have undermined the aura of infallibility he once enjoyed.
His personal life has compounded the narrative. Wang met Tian on a 2008 trip; she is roughly three decades his junior and had a modest acting career before entering business circles. Wang divorced his long‑time wife in 2010 and publicly introduced Tian as his partner years later, a relationship that has attracted moralising commentary in China. The couple’s public roles have since inverted: Tian has leveraged the partnership to burnish a persona of an independent, career‑minded woman, while Wang increasingly looks like the elder whose authority and mystique have faded.
Why does this matter beyond gossip? Wang’s unraveling is emblematic of larger shifts: the attention economy can swiftly recast venerable figures as relics, social‑media optics can undermine long built reputations, and generational and energy gaps are becoming sharper flashpoints in public perceptions of leadership. For China’s property sector — already enfeebled by regulatory tightening and a long sales slowdown — the decline of a symbolic industry elder underscores that past success offers no automatic platform for influence or redemption.
The episode also highlights reputational risk for retired tycoons who seek to remain visible. Wang’s attempts to reinvent himself have collided with changing consumer tastes, intensified civic scrutiny and a digital culture that privileges immediacy over gravitas. Whether viewed with sympathy or schadenfreude, his present predicament demonstrates that the social capital accumulated in boom years is fragile when measured against contemporary standards of authenticity, competence and image.
Whatever the private truth of Wang and Tian’s relationship, the public lesson is clear: in modern China, a business career is no longer a lifetime guarantee of deference. The field of power is now contested not just in boardrooms and on trading floors, but on feeds and livestreams where perception can erode legacy more effectively than any corporate rival.