On Lunar New Year’s Day, while many Chinese households tapped phones for digital red packets, employees of Liaoning’s privately held Fangda Group queued to receive sacks of paper cash. Videos of stacks of hundred‑yuan notes forming a metre‑high ‘cash wall’ and workers taking bundles in hand have become a social‑media flourish repeated across the group’s units for more than a decade. The spectacle — and the scale — has helped transform Fangda and its chairman, Fang Wei, into a conspicuous corporate story.
Fangda’s public face is showy but consistent: the group says it has handed out about 40 billion yuan in cash bonuses to nearly 130,000 staff since 2016, and the ritual has included free cars and customised gold banknotes in other years. That largesse has coincided with a leap in Fang Wei’s personal wealth: the Hurun rich list places him as Liaoning’s richest person with roughly 52.5 billion yuan in net worth in 2025, up from 40.5 billion the year before. For workers, the bonuses are both a material windfall and a ritual of belonging during the holiday.
Behind the theatre lies a corporate empire built through opportunistic acquisitions and heavy financial engineering. Fangda, founded in 2004, grew by buying distressed assets — sometimes via judicial auctions or complex deal structures — turning regional steel, carbon, pharmaceutical and aviation interests into a group with more than 400 billion yuan of reported assets and revenue above 300 billion yuan in 2024. Fang Wei’s strategy was plain: pick up undervalued state or private assets and fold them into a broader, centrally managed platform.
That consolidation came with trade‑offs. Regulators and market observers have flagged Fangda’s heavy use of share pledges and intra‑group financing. Major listed subsidiaries have a large proportion of their controlling stakes pledged as collateral: for example, the group’s carbon and steel holdings show substantial percentages of their controlling shareholders’ stakes under pledge. Such structures boost leverage and liquidity in good times but expose the group to margin calls and contagion if asset prices or earnings stumble.
The spectacle of handing out physical cash also sits within a wider corporate trend in China this year. A number of prominent private firms have publicised unusually generous year‑end awards — from multi‑month salary multiples at big e‑commerce firms to cars and houses at smaller tech and biotech companies. These moves serve multiple purposes: staff retention in a tight labour market, brand building, and a visible reassurance to the public and creditors that companies possess cash buffers.
Yet the optics can be misleading. Fangda’s attempt to swallow the indebted apparel group Shanshan late in 2025 foundered, illustrating the limits of Fang Wei’s ‘snake swallowing elephant’ approach to M&A. The combination of ambitious takeover plans and elevated pledge ratios raises questions for creditors and minority shareholders about whether the group’s headline generosity is funded by sustainable cash flows or by increasingly complex balance‑sheet manoeuvres.
For northeastern China — a region that bore the brunt of industrial restructuring and where Fangda’s roots lie — the narrative matters beyond a viral video. Big, visible payouts reinforce the company’s status as a local employer and power broker, helping to stabilise communities and labour relations. They also serve a reputational function for a private conglomerate that has repeatedly acquired state assets: public displays of largesse are a form of political and social capital in a market where ties to officials and social legitimacy remain valuable.
The broader lesson is that performative generosity and rapid balance‑sheet expansion can coexist uneasily. Fangda’s cash walls tell a persuasive story about corporate vitality and leadership; the group’s leverage metrics and recent acquisition setbacks suggest vulnerabilities that could become acute if economic conditions or interest‑rate dynamics turn unfavourable. Investors and regulators will watch whether future payouts represent durable profits and recruitment policy or temporary measures to shore up confidence.