Xu Jiayin pleaded guilty and expressed remorse in court!

Seeing him raise tall buildings, seeing him entertain guests, seeing him watch his buildings collapse…
No one is more suited to these lines than Xu Jiayin.
Now, Xu Jiayin’s buildings have collapsed.
No wonder—someone whose name includes the character “big” in his company name is simply different from ordinary people; the charges against him are far more than everyone else’s.
He alone racked up eight charges: illegally absorbing public deposits, fundraising fraud, illegal issuance of loans, illegal use of funds, fraudulent issuance of securities, improper disclosure of material information, embezzlement of public office, and bribery to the unit!
In addition, Evergrande Group’s charges include: illegally absorbing public deposits, fundraising fraud, illegal issuance of loans, fraudulent issuance of securities, improper disclosure of material information, and bribery to the unit!
Evergrande Real Estate’s charges are: fraudulent issuance of securities!
Most worth noting is this: Xu Jiayin pleaded guilty and expressed remorse in court.
On the mass public level, Xu Jiayin had three standout moments.
The first was in 2012.
At the opening of that year’s National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Xu Jiayin was blocked by reporters for being late, and photos were taken of him rushing to the venue in a hurry—the Hermes belt with a gold “H” emblem, priced at over 6,000 yuan, went viral online, and netizens gave him the nickname “Belt Brother.”
That incident made Xu Jiayin completely “break out” into the public spotlight, and that photo also became one of his best-known profile images.
The second was in 2017.
Xu Jiayin topped both the Hurun Rich List (290 billion yuan) and the Forbes China Rich List (281.35 billion yuan), becoming the widely recognized richest person in China.
It was a symbol of Evergrande’s roaring momentum, and a peak panorama of China’s golden era of real estate.
The third was in 2019.
At the 70th-anniversary National Day celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Xu Jiayin, as one of the very few invited private entrepreneurs, climbed the Tiananmen City Tower to watch the ceremony—an exceptionally high level of political honor.
However, that was also Xu Jiayin’s final heyday.
Before long, Evergrande sparked a debt crisis, and Xu Jiayin found himself trapped in custody—an enormous giant suddenly crumpled.
📷 Born in rural Henan, living in poverty, turning his life around through education, building himself from scratch by sheer hard work, riding the wave of real estate development, and founding Evergrande.
But then he relied on a high-leverage model to expand at breakneck speed, reaching the peak of his career. Yet his greed and reckless, blindly diversified layout—ignoring the risks related to debt—meant massive debts kept piling up, until it was no longer possible to turn back.
After half a lifetime of rising from hardship, everything was overturned in a single day—from climbing to the top as the country’s richest man starting from a peasant family, to finally being sentenced and imprisoned in the end.
Xu Jiayin’s life was a roller coaster of dramatic rises and falls. He was a trend-chasing pioneer who succeeded in business, but he was also a failure who violated laws and discipline. He was the ultimate embodiment of China’s golden age of real estate and the frenzied surge period of the private economy—more also a tragic footnote to the model of disorderly expansion.
It’s just not known whether, back then, when Xu Jiayin was wearing a suit, a Hermes belt wrapped around his waist, swinging both arms as he ran along with a coquettish air, he had ever thought of the outcome of today.
A sigh.
#XuJiayin