Zhang Jindong’s Carrefour, bought for 5.2 billion, sold for only 2 million

When times align, heaven and earth work together; when fortune turns, even heroes have no freedom.
Zhang Jindong—who once dominated the business world—has arrived at his “darkest moment.” Just as his personal assets have been “emptied out,” Suning has recently issued an announcement saying it will sell Carrefour China’s business for 2 million to a company registered in Hong Kong.
To put it in perspective: when Zhang Jindong acquired Carrefour in 2019, he spent 5.2 billion. That means Suning is losing 4.998 billion on the deal alone. In addition, with operating losses from 2019 to 2025, total losses are expected to be nearly 10 billion.
Zhang Jindong is an entrepreneur who refuses to be complacent. When the internet wave rose, he took the initiative to change—marrying into Alibaba, launching Suning e-commerce, and opening 5,000 Suning mini-stores in one go. When the outside world questioned that Suning’s actions caused far too many losses, Zhang responded forcefully: “The money Suning puts into its mini-stores isn’t 1 billion or 2 billion—it’s 10 billion or 20 billion!”
Buying a sports team, doing e-sports, acquiring Carrefour, Dragon Ball live streaming, Wandaide Department Store, Red Kids, Tiantian Express... Suning chased almost every hype wave—yet in the end, none of it made money. Now, its massive business empire has fractured: some are being sold off, and some are continuing to rack up losses.
Is Zhang Jindong wrong? Looking at the backdrop at the time, he was among the first to recognize that a crisis was coming—earlier than most traditional physical-empires giants—and he also demonstrated astonishing resolve for transformation. But Suning’s tragedy lies precisely in this: trying to use the chain-store hegemony mindset of a past era to forcefully attack the fortress of the internet’s second half.
This kind of silent collapse is actually more despairing than simply “losing direction.”
Sometimes, for a company—or a person—from the peak to being ruthlessly discarded by the times, it’s not because they made some huge mistake, nor because they didn’t work hard or didn’t innovate. It’s just because they’re too old.
If you’re old, you should step down and let the young take over. Don’t have a parent-like mindset—thinking young people are too casual and volatile and can’t get things done. In today’s hottest AI industry, most of the people carrying the main burden are born in the 1990s and 2000s.
Remove the “old taste,” trust the young—only then can a company and a society stay full of vitality and keep moving forward. $BNB
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