Original Wang Sicong, far worse than his father

Author: Chen Xingjie, Economic Columnist
Recently, Wang Sicong and Sun Yining exchanged their chat records, and the earth-flavored love stories were flying in the sky.
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The overrated Wang Sicong
Let’s start with Wang Jianlin and Wang Sicong’s most glorious 2015. 2015 was the peak period of Wang Jianlin, when Wanda’s business empire was in full bloom: from real estate, city squares, properties, hotels, and overseas investment, all of them exceeded their plans.
Wanda’s assets exceeded 600 billion in that year, and its annual revenue was nearly 300 billion, spanning three major areas: commerce, culture, and finance.
Wang Sicong’s 2015 was also good. He is particularly active on Weibo, and media outside the entertainment circle seem to pay more attention to his investment.
Wang Sicong is ushering in the harvest time of his investment. With the 500 million fund given by his father, Wang Sicong invested in a number of companies in the fields of games, live broadcasting, e-sports, and catering. There are only five listed companies, which also made Wang Sicong praised as “young and promising.”

Looking back today, Wang Jianlin makes people regretful, but his strategic contraction is mainly due to the changing environment and “the heroes are not free to transport.” The collapse of Wang Sicong’s “investment myth” is entirely a problem of his own talents. For example, Panda Live, where Wang Sicong is the CEO, has not found an effective business model after three years of operation. Panda has always relied on capital for blood transfusion, and live broadcast platforms such as Huya and Douyu have also attacked it. In 2019, the long-term unprofitable panda live broadcast finally closed down, leaving behind a pile of money owed storms. This is a project that Wang Sicong has deeply participated in in the company’s entrepreneurship, and his investment work, some of the investment income is also overestimated. It is said that the Ledou game (privatized), which has an investment return of 5 times, was close to listing when Wang Sicong intervened, and it broke soon after the listing. How to achieve 5 times the return? Yunyou Holdings and Tiange interacted, these two game companies went public and soared, and the media helped Wang Sicong calculate their performance; the problem was that early investments had a limited sale period. Before the ban was lifted, the two companies started a long downward road, and then cashing out would only Loss. How does Wang Sicong achieve high returns? Judging from the information excavated by the financial media, Wang Sicong has invested in few profitable projects and many loss-making projects. Looking at the length of time, his investment record is not outstanding. Considering that many investments are based on Wanda’s resources and influence, such results are even more ugly. Wang Sicong rarely expresses his investment ideas. His investment projects span the fields of games, entertainment, catering, and new energy. It seems to be a pan-entertainment industry, but there is no consistent logic—perhaps the biggest logic is that Wang Sicong likes. Just like the krypton gold player in the game, Wang Sicong smashed with big money. Of course there will be successful cases, but Wang Sicong’s own investment skills have not improved. Once the tide of capital recedes, the game can no longer be krypton gold, Wang Sicong’s mediocrity in investment is reflected. Wang Sicong doesn’t seem to care about these, and he rarely sees news related to his investment business in the media. More are the hot topics he created on Weibo, and the wonderful life that he exposed from time to time. In just a few years, Wang Sicong’s public girlfriends or rumored girlfriends reached as many as 19, and each of them was an internet celebrity. Wang Sicong is keen on this, enjoys beauties, and likes to be surrounded. He has become a “net celebrity” on Weibo, and he has a true temperament and loves to play. Weibo is his show, mocking various stars for “Daguai”. Isn’t this normal for mediocre investment performance? Many people do not understand the business world and lack understanding of investment. They think that if they have money and resources, coupled with connections, is it not easy to make money? In fact, the wealthy also face various investment traps. They are limited by their knowledge background and often have misunderstandings; and their superior living environment tends to misjudge the specific business world. Like Wang Sicong, he is born with a good background and has a sense of superior IQ (Wang Jianlin once criticized Wang Sicong for having “severe IQ superiority”). It is only natural that the noble son who spends all his time in the pile of gold powder is misled by his own personality defects and temptations. It can be said that Wang Sicong’s investment for many years is only mediocre, and it is rare that he has not encountered a big thunder. Most successful investors are hard-working readers and researchers. If, like Wang Sicong, the wandering skeletal person can also achieve great success, it is a weird thing. 2 Underestimated Wang Jianlin Wang Sicong is 33 years old this year, unless there is a big self-awareness in the future, he will most likely continue to be so cynical. It may not matter to him, game life is better than hardship haha. Compared with Wang Jianlin back then, people can’t help but sigh with emotion. Wang Jianlin was born in a military family and worked hard and strives for the strong since he was a child. Wang Jianlin started as a soldier and was promoted from squad leader to platoon leader and company commander. When he retired, he was already regiment leader. At the age of 34, Wang Jianlin served as the director of the government office and took over the old city reconstruction project in Dalian. From this, he went to sea and made his first pot of gold. Compared with Wang Sicong, Wang Jianlin’s early resume is not glamorous, but he has obvious qualities of success. Wang Jianlin works decisively and resolutely, has a strong ability to act, and has strong business judgment. From the early transformation of the old city, to the transformation of commercial real estate and cultural tourism projects, to the entry into the entertainment industry, the acquisition of AMC, the second largest theater company in the United States, and the acquisition of American Legendary Pictures, Wang Jianlin has stepped on every rhythm. After 2017, the environment changed suddenly, overseas investment and mergers and acquisitions were suspended, and Wang Jianlin broke his arm to survive. Although the title of the richest man was lost, Wanda survived and lived well. A few years ago, financial leverage was also used extensively, and a large number of domestic and overseas mergers and acquisitions were carried out. Wanda is already much luckier than a certain state and a certain airline. Wang Jianlin is in the real estate business, and entrepreneurs in this industry do not seem to be respected as much as in other industries. Many people think that real estate development has no technical content. If you have money and have government relations, it’s not enough? As a matter of fact, real estate development is an extremely complex systematic project, which not only involves dealing with dozens of government departments, but also involves various tasks such as banking, construction, construction, sales, and real estate. As for the commercial real estate and cultural tourism that Wang Jianlin is involved in, it is even more complicated. China’s real estate industry is controlled by the government and is highly market-oriented. There are hundreds of thousands of real estate companies across the country and hundreds of large-scale enterprises. The competition is extremely fierce. In downstream sales, real estate developers have to formulate sales strategies and also deal with government policy interference. Real estate is a highly leveraged industry. Once the sales are not smooth, it will face the end of the capital chain breaking and collapse. However, if you do not increase leverage, you may fall behind in the competition. This places high demands on entrepreneurs. Wang Jianlin is regarded by many people as a manly character; or the old-school boss who sings “Nothing”. In fact, Wang Jianlin has the consciousness of entrepreneurship. He once talked about entrepreneurship in his speech: innovation (I think the innovation of business model is the most important. More core than technological innovation, management innovation, marketing innovation, etc., is the re-engineering and innovation of business models), persistence (doing An enterprise has two very important points. First, it is not afraid of failure, but also to be able to keep making progress) and responsibility (to develop the enterprise well, this is the first and greatest social responsibility of an entrepreneur.) Wang Jianlin’s summary of entrepreneurship is inconsistent with the academic discourse. But this is not important. The important thing is that he realizes that entrepreneurship is very unique and can only be obtained in practice-to some extent, it comes from innate understanding. Wang Sicong was sent to the UK to study at a very young age, from childhood to university, studying philosophy at university, and fluent in four languages. Wang Jianlin obviously cultivated Wang Sicong as a “Prince of Wanda”, but it was a pity that Wang Sicong was far from his father’s expectations. Wang Jianlin once said that he regretted sending his child to study abroad early. In fact, even if Wang Jianlin kept his son by his side since childhood and taught by example, the result may not be satisfactory. Entrepreneurship is so unique, it is a series of comprehensive capabilities. Whether a person has an entrepreneurial spirit is affected by personality, interests, education, and accidental experience. It can only be discovered by digging, and it is difficult to be deliberately cultivated. Wang Jianlin has only one only son, and the more he deliberately cultivates, he may stifle the heir’s nature. Such things are often seen by other companies. 3 Why are you not rich for three generations Entrepreneurship has been an area that has been neglected in economics for a long time. Traditional economics talks about resource allocation, and various resource elements are combined under the action of prices to form new wealth. As for the innovation and creation, the role of entrepreneurship is often overlooked. As for how the entrepreneurial spirit is formed, it is basically ignored. Entrepreneurship requires curiosity, cleverness, keenness, and perseverance to have the most powerful motivation, which can only be found in the crowd. The more free, relaxed, and innovative people are, the more likely it is that entrepreneurs will be born. Such a “law” is indeed a tragedy for entrepreneurs. They have to face the embarrassing situation of “one generation is worse than one generation”. In many family businesses, we can see the inheritance of “one generation of huge wealth, second generation of finance, and third generation of art”. This is essentially the disappearance of entrepreneurship. As time goes by, the mean returns, and some very wealthy families will appear mediocre or even prodigal. In order to prevent this situation from appearing, many large companies turn to professional managers after the death of the first and second generation founders. For the whole society, such “richness is not more than three generations” is natural and healthy. Wealth will not be permanent because of family surnames. For those who are not worthy of virtue, wealth will soon disappear; and the poor will always have the opportunity to surpass as long as they cultivate their children well. There is metabolism in the human world, and the communication between the past and the present. Only under this wealth system can society not form “class consolidation”. It is never the market economy that solidifies the class, but the officials outside the market