Debuted right after graduating from high school

I used to think that "with great power comes great responsibility" was just an empty phrase.

But after he actually reached a high position, Fan Wumian found that making some changes within his power and helping society and others really made him feel great.

For example, under his guidance, waste-to-energy plants have begun to be popularized ahead of schedule. Just two years ago, people were still troubled by the "garbage siege," but now there is less and less garbage that needs to be landfilled.

There are also businesses that cooperate with the government to protect employment and provide a large number of job opportunities. Although they don't make much money, they allow millions of families to not have to worry about basic food and clothing.

Tencent, Alibaba, and several companies under Fan Wumian's name have jointly launched a tree-planting program. Most of the trees to be planted have economic value, with the goal of boosting local employment and economic development while mitigating some of the effects of the greenhouse effect.

In addition, Fan Wumian's family trust charitable foundation has begun to regularly donate to thousands of children's welfare organizations in the area of ​​helping orphans.

As for Hope Primary School, with the increasing urbanization level, there are fewer and fewer children in rural areas. From a certain perspective, Fan Wumian felt that there was no need to carry out large-scale construction. Even if a brand-new teaching building was built at great expense, it would likely be abandoned in just ten years.

Given the limited scale of donations, Fan Wumian prefers to use the money wisely. Recently, he has been having his "little loudspeakers" speak out, publicly advocating for fishing and grazing bans in many parts of the country and for the scientific regulation of local ecosystems.

His various actions were noticed by others, which led to Fan Wumian being extremely popular in mainland China. In fields such as asset management, the internet, entertainment, and real estate, many decisions were made after consulting his opinion, and he also regularly received internal documents from various departments.

With his business empire reaching its peak, he has a wealth of talent and ample funds. Even if he ventures into new fields, he can handle them with ease. Take Thunderobot mobile phone company, which is trying to develop and incubate some components, for example. Last year, its sales exceeded 440 billion RMB, taking away a large market share from companies such as Samsung, HTC, and Sony.

Although it is difficult for the QQOS operating system to expand beyond the mainland market, the mainland economy is growing rapidly and the market size is quite large. Even just capturing a share of the mainland market would be enough.

In the international market, Thunderobot chose to cooperate with Android and began to enter markets in Southeast Asia, South America, Europe and the United States. Only India was ignored by Fan Wumian, who was afraid that if he made some money, the Indians would try to confiscate it all with interest.

With businesses spanning various industries, becoming the world's richest man was a natural progression. In fact, Fan Wumian also holds assets worth approximately $500 billion in several family trusts.

Since the financial crisis, the value of many companies he held has multiplied several times. The acquisition of Fei Li, which cost four or five hundred million US dollars, is now worth more than 10 billion US dollars, and Valentino is also valued at 10 billion US dollars. Naturally, Fan Wumian has made a fortune.

Without material worries, Fan Wumian's perspective on many things changed dramatically, and his state of mind became increasingly peaceful.

During his time living in Shenzhen, Fan Wumian frequently visited the Shahe Golf Club, which he had acquired, to play golf and relax.

I spent two days with Zhuang Muxi.

Next door to the mansion at No. 89 Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, Xingzai had just moved in and immediately sought out Fan Wumian, excitedly telling him:

“Mr. Fan, you gave me a hand in 2009. Otherwise, I would have gone bankrupt if my cash flow had dried up. Now that all the other mansions have been sold, I’ve earned you a total of HK$11 billion. I haven’t disappointed you, have I?”

“I recently visited the Ho Tung Garden on The Peak and even asked a designer to make a model. A total of 11 brand-new mansions can be developed. However, the total purchase price is about HK$50 billion. Considering the subsequent investment, the cost is a bit high, but I feel it has a promising future.”

"How about we team up again and try to take over Ho Tung Garden?"

Fan Wumian chuckled, poured Xingzai a cup of coffee, and told him:

"To be honest, there was a time when I even considered buying the land in Ho Tung Garden to build a new house for myself."

"But then I gave up and chose to take the money to Sanya to build a luxury resort hotel. The low rate of return was only one aspect; the other was that the atmosphere of the port city seemed to have become less comfortable than before."

"With such a large island like Hong Kong, is there really a lack of land to build luxury homes? It's just that the number is artificially limited, which has led to the continuous increase in prices. A mansion costing four or five hundred million Hong Kong dollars is enough to buy a particularly beautiful new house overseas, which can also come with a huge garden."

"I think it's almost reached its limit. It's not worth continuing to mess around like this. I advise you to calm down. Investing in stocks is worse than real estate."

Xingzai often acts unilaterally, but he can still listen to Fan Wumian's judgments. Hearing this, he said with a helpless expression:
"I see. Actually, I'm a little hesitant myself, which is why I wanted to ask for your opinion first. If I don't want to invest, that's fine too. I can look for other projects. Could you please give me some advice?"

In the past two years, Stephen Chow and Fan Wumian have collaborated on three films. "Kung Fu Hustle" performed well after its release, and Stephen Chow continued to star in "Kung Fu Hustle 2". Filming was just completed last month. The story is about how he and a mute woman retired together, but were forced to return to the martial arts world due to an accident.

After listening, Fan Wumian pondered for a while and then said to Xingzai:

“You have a high profile in mainland China, so you can try to find businesses that interest you and start your own brands.”

"If you ask me how exactly it's done, I can't say much. Anyway, chain restaurants, fashion, and retail consumer goods all have pretty high profit margins."

"How have you been lately? Have you come across any good scripts?"

Sing shook his head and said:

"No, it's probably because I've acted in too many movies that I often lose interest in this industry. I'm currently watching 'iPartment,' which your company is producing. I feel that sitcoms like this, where several young people share an apartment, are very relaxing to watch."

"iPartment 3" is currently being filmed and is expected to be broadcast in two or three years. The "My Own Swordsman" series is being overshadowed by Fan Wumian and has only aired up to the third season. Last year, a big movie, "My Own Swordsman: The True Dragon Emperor," was also released during the Spring Festival. The story is about the emperor traveling incognito but being assassinated by the princes and the emperor's relatives. The movie grossed over 5 million RMB at the mainland box office.

Fan Wumian could probably understand Xingzai's empty and boring life, but he had many girls around him and always had a lot of business to deal with, so his life was actually quite fulfilling.

After chatting with Xingzai for a while and seeing him off, several Hong Kong government officials came to visit, inquiring about the reform of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and some matters related to cooperation with the mainland. Fan Wumian was annoyed by these troublesome matters, but as his business grew, he inevitably had to deal with the higher-ups, so he patiently chatted earnestly for more than an hour before taking a yacht to Macau to visit the automobile factory located in the Hengqin Special Economic Zone again.

Models like the Range Rover Evoque, Discovery series, and Jaguar's gasoline-powered vehicles are now mostly produced here, at a much lower cost than manufacturing them in the UK, and they can also enter the mainland market with lower tariffs.

In terms of R&D budget, most of the funds were allocated to electric vehicle projects, along with the development of batteries and motors, and the acquisition of global lithium mining resources. Most of the parts for gasoline vehicles were directly customized and purchased from third parties.

As an oil-poor country, China has a strategic need to promote electric vehicles, while many major oil-producing countries are not interested in the electric vehicle industry, and things like reducing pollutant emissions are not within their consideration.

Therefore, at least for the next two or three decades, gasoline-powered vehicles will remain the mainstream of the global automotive industry. Fan Wumian has no plan to completely switch to a new track. He only chooses to purchase parts directly from the market because purchasing is more cost-effective than developing and producing them in-house.

Since the launch of new products such as the Land Rover Evoque, Jaguar XF, and XJ in mainland China at the beginning of last year, they have been selling like hotcakes. Thanks to their excellent quality, appearance, and brand, some customers are even waiting up to 5 months for delivery.

Today I came to the factory mainly to see the new cars that are under development. Among them, the appearance of a new "Defender" series car made Fan Wumian feel that it was more novel and stylish than the G-Class.

When production begins in the Hengqin Special Economic Zone, the company will have an advantage in terms of tax and fee costs, which should allow it to seize a significant share of the luxury car market, often costing millions of yuan, from foreign brands.

In just a few short years, the development of the mainland has reached a new height, especially after the surge in real estate values, the number of consumers buying cars is increasing dramatically.

After personally driving around the test track a few times, Fan Wumian visited the adjacent integrated circuit factory. Two years ago, he finally managed to raise some funds and invested in MediaTek Inc. in Taiwan. The plan was to start producing some low- to mid-range chips first. The performance wouldn't be too strong, but it would be enough for consumers who wanted to pursue cost-effectiveness.

There are many engineers in the factory now, working overtime to debug the new equipment, with plans to officially start production at the beginning of next year.

Fan Wumian doesn't seek to make a lot of money here; he only hopes to take this opportunity to cultivate a group of talents. In the future, the annual import volume of this industry will be higher than that of oil, so it's definitely a good idea to make plans in advance.

In 2011, MediaTek's smartphone chip shipments in mainland China were only 1000 million units, but this year it is expected to increase to 1.2 million units. In just two years since investing in MediaTek, the company's stock price has soared, which has already helped Fan Wumian recoup the cost of investing in this new factory. Once it starts production, it will be all profits.

After trying out several new Thunderobot phones scheduled for release in January next year, Fan Wumian pointed out some shortcomings, such as the message management not being concise enough and the phones being too heavy.

There's no way to improve it in the short term; we only hope to make some upgrades and adjustments during the development of the next generation of new products.

The R&D team has put in a lot of effort, but Fan Wumian has a habit of comparing current products with future mobile phone products, so he inevitably feels that there are many areas where the current products fall short.
After taking some time to investigate, Fan Wumian took a car through customs to the mainland and went straight to Guangzhou to have dinner with the bosses of several real estate companies.

He was delayed for more than an hour due to traffic, and everyone was waiting. When they met, he showed no impatience whatsoever and was incredibly enthusiastic.

Mr. Xu, the boss of Hengda Group, is currently riding high. It's hard to imagine that such a large real estate empire could collapse so easily in the future, with no hope of recovery in sight.

Mr. Xu stood up to offer a toast, said a lot of nice things, and then laughed loudly at the end:
"Come on! Let's all toast President Fan. If it weren't for the financing that gave us so much money, none of us would have had the chance to get rich. Although there are often some minor frictions when participating in land auctions, it's all for the sake of doing business. In the future, we will still rely on President Fan's supervision and guidance to strive for even greater success!"

Fan Wumian took a small sip of baijiu (Chinese liquor), smiled, and said:

"The real estate market is booming, but I'm terrified of what others are doing. The barriers to entry in the real estate industry are too low. Some businessmen with a net worth of a few million can pool their money and develop a small housing project."

“I’m thinking, with everyone rushing in, will we really need so many houses in the future? With the amount of land you hold, you have enough to keep things running for a long time. You should consider how to gracefully withdraw.”

"It's not that we should completely stop acquiring land, but rather focus on first-, second-, and third-tier cities to reduce inventory. Then we can recoup some funds and use them for other businesses, which will reduce the risk."

"No housing market can rise forever, and no business can remain hot forever. If you recoup some funds in the next two years, we can try investing in other businesses, such as new energy, semiconductors, and the financial industry upstream of real estate."

Those who came today were mostly owners of medium-to-large-sized real estate companies, including the head of Country Garden, the richest woman in mainland China, and the general manager of Vanke Real Estate.

As soon as Fan Wumian said these words, the atmosphere at the scene instantly calmed down.

Frankly, some people feel that housing prices in certain mainland cities have risen too much. However, some business owners only want to take advantage of the current boom and make a fortune as soon as possible, without considering what will happen in the long run.

After all, if you take the company public and reduce your holdings as soon as possible, or push others into the water and get out of the market early, the returns will be much higher than if you take a steady and cautious approach.

Fan Wumian directly or indirectly controls approximately 23% of Hengda Real Estate's shares and has also forcibly rejected several flashy but impractical projects, such as the "Huahai Island" artificial island and several cultural tourism cities.

Initially, Boss Xu was slightly displeased with this, but he had no choice but to bow down to Fan Wumian. Now, he obediently supports him, remarking with emotion:

"A man who does not plan for the future will have trouble in the present. Although the real estate market has been doing well these past two years, it is always wise to plan ahead. The winds of change can shift in an instant. If housing prices do not rise, sellers' enthusiasm will immediately cool down. I will definitely make sure to give serious instructions on reducing land reserves. If we are to cooperate across industries, I will have to trouble Mr. Fan to help me continue to make money."

Fan Wumian ate the exquisite dishes and smiled as he spoke:
"I was just mentioning it casually. Regardless of what you think, when the time is right, I'll either try to transform my business or cash out and leave. The US subprime mortgage crisis has only been over for a few years, and it's really impressive."

"When I had nothing to do, I asked someone to do a survey. The large companies here hold enough land to develop for about 5 years. If we wait a few years, it will probably be in a downturn by then."

"The real estate industry is subject to cyclical fluctuations. Gradually transforming and reducing risks is the right way. I know that many people get money from foreign investors very easily, but they only think about making a quick buck and running away. In the end, we will still have to take over the mess ourselves. It would be best to reduce the debt ratio."

(End of this chapter)