Once China’s poster child of professionalised real‑estate development, China Vanke has slid into a governance and liquidity storm that is reshaping investor confidence in the sector. An investigative package by Qingliu studio traces a web of “shadow” entities—companies tied to Vanke insiders or controlled by former executives—that repeatedly bought land or project companies at public auctions and then, within months, transferred those assets into Vanke. The practice has left the listed group holding hundreds of billions of yuan in “other receivables” and large impairment charges that helped turn recent years’ profits into massive losses.
The pattern is consistent across multiple jurisdictions and project types. In late 2022 a company operating under the name Wuhan Wancheng won a plot for Rmb8.96bn and shortly afterwards the controlling interests were transferred to a newly created Vanke subsidiary and developed under the Vanke brand. Similar short‑cycle transfers occurred in Xuzhou, Xinjiang, Dongguan and within Vanke’s home base of Shenzhen, where companies linked to the so‑called “Boson” (博商) network acted as the initial bidder and then conveyed project companies to Vanke.
The transactions are striking not only for their frequency but for their opacity. Many of the intermediary firms share addresses, contact details and executives with Vanke organisations; some list no staff at all. In several projects the land or development was marketed as a Vanke product even while project companies remained formally owned by third parties, blurring the line between genuine third‑party joint‑ventures and what looks like internal capital rotation.
The financial fallout is material. Qingliu’s review finds that, at a 2023 peak, at least six project companies linked to a Boson top‑holding had more than Rmb20bn each of receivables from Vanke, totalling roughly Rmb167bn on Vanke’s books; by ownership share, the Boson‑linked portion was about Rmb84bn. Vanke’s consolidated “other receivables” have hovered above Rmb2,000bn since 2018, and the company took Rmb258bn of credit impairment in 2024. Its 2025 profit warning projects an Rmb820bn loss, raising the obvious question of how much of that shortfall stems from writedowns tied to these opaque related‑party flows.
The commercial logic offered for using intermediaries—local relationships or market speed in contested auctions—does not square neatly with the facts. Several Boson vehicles were effectively dormant shells, registered at Vanke addresses, with executives holding dual roles in Vanke and the third parties. In other words, the middlemen who “won” plots often appeared to be insiders rather than independent local partners with superior market access.
That arrangement has governance consequences. Large volumes of funds advanced to project companies are recorded as receivables rather than equity or straightforward loans, amplifying balance‑sheet risk when projects underperform. Where counterparties are opaque, minority shareholders and creditors cannot easily assess conflicts of interest or the fairness of transaction pricing. The recent detainment of a senior Vanke executive and reports of its chairman becoming hard to reach add political and legal uncertainty to what might otherwise be a financial irregularity problem.
For markets and regulators the case presents several challenges. Chinese authorities have in recent years tightened rules on related‑party transactions and on the property sector’s leverage, and they have shown willingness to pursue criminal or administrative cases in high‑profile corporate collapses. For investors, the episode underscores how residual insider networks can extract value from a listed issuer in ways that are hard to detect until impairment charges are taken. For Vanke, the immediate priorities are transparent disclosure, independent audit scrutiny and a credible remediation plan that restores confidence among bondholders and retail shareholders.
What to watch next: Vanke’s full annual report and audit notes for 2024–25, any regulatory announcements about probes into connected‑party deals, and the company’s recovery plan for liquidity and asset quality. More broadly, the episode will be a test of China’s appetite for tighter oversight of connected transactions in an industry that still depends on large, often bespoke, local deals.