Dragons in Diamond Village by David Bandurski

Author:David Bandurski [Bandurski, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61219-572-8
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2016-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

9

DUBIOUS RICHES

Home Garden

The baffling matter of the sprawling Home Garden complex, a furniture mall situated on a tract of old farmland on the west side of the village across Xian Village Road, came next in my research into Xian Village’s business dealings. The complex was mentioned in the Xian Village Chronicle under a section on ‘collective holdings,’ but the book provided only a paltry handful of facts accompanied by a few photographs of the space and its glossy marble interior. It was built in 2003, and with a total area of almost 323,000 square feet it was one of the largest malls of its kind in Guangzhou. It was home to a cinema megaplex with seven screens and close to 1,000 seats.158 Though I could locate no public record of a land-use permit for the property, I came across some prospectuses of the Guangzhou Jinyi Film & Television Group (ahead of its listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange), which said the property was built ‘by Xian Village Economic Development Company Limited [one of the offshoots of the village’s industry group] … on collectively held land in its possession, zoned for commercial office, business and financial services use.’ The village enterprise had obtained the necessary building permits and had ‘leased the property to Pearl River New Town Commercial Plaza Company Limited, permitting the subletting of the property.’ The latter had turned right around and leased the complex’s ‘luxury’ cinema to Guangzhou Jinyi Film & Television Group, which was operating cinemas in first- and second-tier cities across China, for a minimum annual rent of 1.1 million yuan, about $175,000, or 10 per cent of cinema ticket sales. The rest of the mall’s cavernous space was leased to high-end furniture retailers.159 Home Garden’s operator, Pearl River New Town Commercial Plaza, was identified in village and district sources as a ‘collective village enterprise.’ But the company, established in September 2001, two years before construction of the complex was completed, had never in fact been ‘collective.’ Registration files showed it was held by two private shareholders, Xu Shouwei and Li Xiaojian, who controlled 68 and 32 per cent respectively.

Casting about for connections between these shareholders and village interests, I discovered that the June 2012 Guangzhou Jinyi prospectus disclosed the relationships of its core owners and executives and made clear that Li Xiaojian was the son of sixty-year-old Li Genchang, who, along with his sister Li Yuzhen, controlled not just Guangzhou Jinyi but also the sprawling Jiayu Group,160 the parent company of a corporate empire spanning property, hotel management, tourism and entertainment.161 Its subsidiaries included Jiayu Real Estate Development, founded in April 1995, which by 2012 had become the Pearl River New Town’s largest landholder.162 Xu Shouwei, the principal shareholder of the ostensibly ‘collective’ company operating Home Garden, had married into the Jiayu business empire, becoming the husband of Li Yuzhen’s daughter. Guangzhou’s Time Weekly newspaper had recently reached out to Xu for background information on Li Genchang and Li Yuzhen, but he had refused to breathe a word; he was bound, he said, by a nondisclosure agreement.

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