在二十世纪九十年代初，携带仅四百元人民币，即踏上了前往深圳的旅途。短短三十年后，他建立了一座商业帝国，借力于中国基础设施建设热潮，在自我宣传和善于讨好急于吸引投资的地方官员的帮助下。
被称为“世界铜王”的当地媒体人物，王某人是中国金属贸易繁荣时期的显赫人士。他的豪华住所及公司总部内铺着大理石地板，家具精致考究，并摆放有与世界各国领导人会面的照片，象征着他是中国从贫穷到富裕梦想的典型化身。
在2017年，他向陷入困境的中国恒大集团创始人兼前董事长许家印伸出了援手，这一壮举让他一时间吸引了全球的目光。他能承担这样的举动，是因为当时他的企业处理了约中国铜进口总量的十分之一，并拥有广泛的加工厂网络和经营着三十多个工业园区，声称在全球范围内拥有矿产资源。
快速的城市化进程、便捷的信贷渠道以及中国政府开放时的补贴政策，许多人都借此发展了商业帝国。而王某人看到了通过吸引地方政府关注开发的热情获取利润的机会。他一次又一次地与地方政府达成协议，将闲置土地变为工业园区，这股热潮最终破裂，导致中国经济陷入困境，他的商业帝国也分崩离析。
铜贸易业务和工厂相继关闭，工业园区被停业或被当地政府接管。目前，王某人面临追讨超过109亿元人民币（约16亿美元）的债务索赔。
根据与商界伙伴、银行家、政府官员及前员工的访谈，叙述了他从崛起到急速陨落的故事。中国富豪们的命运轮盘转动迅速，而没有哪位富豪像王某人那样与国家经济起落如此紧密地联系在一起。
这在很大程度上是因为他的商业实践模仿并放大了更广泛金融体系中的过度行为，尤其在较小城市中。合作伙伴和官员表示，他构建的基础设施，在轻松获取信贷和巨大承诺下建立的企业形象无法承受市场低迷及政府打击私营企业政策的影响。
王某人出生于1968年的安徽省东部一个普通农民家庭。他在上海的一家石油化工公司开始了自己的职业生涯。当他1993年到达深圳时，他曾声称在那里度过了无家可归的日子，睡在水泥管里。
早年阶段，他专注于将原始铜加工成各种用途的棒材和电缆，从厨房餐桌到电力网络等应有尽有。这一时期的中国正处于经济飞速增长的状态，在房屋建设与电网部署中大步前进。他逐渐积累了更多的工厂，并于1990年代末在香港创立了公司“阿美”。
他购买大量价格低廉的铜原料，进行加工并积累库存，待价格上升时出售获利。
他以夸大其词的形象出现，在公司豪华总部的展示中声称其拥有全球20多个国家的矿山，这一说法显然大为夸张。自认为是学者的他告诉访客，每年阅读100本书。这位富豪期望员工们也效仿之法，在办公室书架上展示书籍。
“我抓住了中国经济上升的趋势和世界趋势，我很幸运生活在一个伟大的时代。”他曾表示，“当然，我也投入了很多努力。普通人不会像我这样工作。他们败给的不是别人而是自己。”
大约在2010年代初期，他开始在中国各地设立工业园区——根据参与项目的人士及当地政府官员的说法。他对地方政府承诺的是高新技术制造企业的入驻、高额税收和就业机会，从而帮助官员完成北京制定的增长目标作为交换，他获得了优惠待遇和补贴。有时他会转手出售土地。
这种快速扩张使融资更加容易，并反过来增加了“阿美”与地方当局的可信度。然后，他用工业用地作抵押获取更多的贷款，并再次设立更多工业园区以此模式运作。该商业模式帮助他在全中国建立了深厚广泛的地方政府联系。
参与访谈的多名人士表示，在2010年代期间，正是这些工业园区而非铜业务推动了阿美的大部分增长。然而，许多所谓的高技术园区实际上是充满低级制造商的地方，并未达到预期目标。其中一些项目从未完成。
在超过60起针对他的法律诉讼中，大部分与工业园区相关，据中国数据提供商天眼查报道。山东省法院的文件揭示了他的方法。2019年初的一例案中，在未获得施工许可的情况下，阿美敦促一家国有企业启动一项价值数十亿元的光电项目，目的是在有官员来访时拥有办公室和展示室以产生印象。该项目从未完成，建设方留下了大额无法支付的账单。
多次尝试通过电子邮件和电话联系王未能成功。其位于新加坡的贵金属贸易公司“万宝”总经理之一王立忠也未对此事发表回应。
阿美集团在2022年的《财富》全球500强排名中的收入为1.12万亿人民币，净资产达1960亿人民币。当时，他的个人财富约为1860亿人民币。
然而，在那之前不久，北京严厉的新冠疫情封锁政策以及解封后经济难以恢复已经影响了金属需求。王某人在几十年间的快速扩张加速了过剩产能形成，并使得这种收缩更加严峻。他不断增长的战略、以工业用地作为贷款抵押物的做法变得无法维持下去。工业园区项目暂停，地方政府担心废弃的土地和建筑以及错过财政目标而开始采取法律行动。
阿美的衰败来得迅速。在2021年下半年的两次中，王某被中国法院施加了支出限制，但之后这些限制被解除。然后，在去年十月，他的多名管理人员和交易员被捕。次月其最大的工业园区停业，根据全国企业信用信息公示系统（CNCA），他在山东省的公司股权也被冻结。
他的确切行踪未知。据前合作伙伴透露，他认为他仍然在中国，只是最近几个月没有在公共场合露面。
新闻来源：www.bloomberg.com
原文地址：The Rise and Fall of China’s Copper King. Here’s How It Happened
新闻日期：2024-10-01
原文摘要：
arrived in Shenzhen in the early 1990s with 400 yuan in his pocket. Within three decades, he’d built an empire on the back of China’s infrastructure boom, with relentless self-promotion and a talent for wooing local authorities desperate to attract investment.Today, he’s on the way back to where he began.Dubbed ‘world copper king’ in local media, Wang was a notable figure in metals trading through the boom years. His marble-floored home and company headquarters, replete with rosewood furniture and photographs of encounters with world leaders, made him the embodiment of the new China’s rags-to-riches dream.Wang grabbed headlines in 2017 when he threw a lifeline to the embattled , founder and then-chairman of property developer China Evergrande Group. He could afford the gesture. At that point, Wang’s handled — it said — a 10th of China’s copper imports. It had a vast network of fabrication plants, ran around 30 business parks and claimed to own mines across the globe.Amer benefited from rapid urbanization, easy access to credit and government subsidies as the country opened. Many did. What Wang also saw was the opportunity to turn local authorities’ hunger for development into profit. He struck deal after deal to turn empty land into industrial parks, feeding a property bubble that has since popped — leaving China’s economy in the doldrums and his empire in tatters.The copper trading operations and factories have been closed, the business parks shuttered or taken over by local governments. Wang himself is facing legal claims seeking 10.9 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) in unpaid debts.Interviews with business associates, bankers, government officials and former employees tell the story of his rise and then sudden downfall. The wheel of fortune turns fast for China’s billionaires, but few were as closely correlated with the country’s economic vicissitudes as Amer was.That’s in large part due to Wang’s business practices, which mirrored the excesses of the wider financial system and often exacerbated them, especially in smaller cities, the associates and officials said. An edifice built on easy credit and grandiose promises could not withstand the combination of a market downturn and a government crackdown on private enterprise. They asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the topic.Born into an ordinary peasant family in Anhui province in eastern China in 1968, Wang got his first job at a petrochemicals company in Shanghai. When he turned up in Shenzhen in 1993, he later claimed, he slept rough in a cement pipe.During his early days, Wang concentrated on fabricating raw copper into the rods and wire used in everything from kitchen table tops to electrical networks. His timing was perfect, coinciding with China’s spectacular double-digit economic growth in the 1990s, as housing blocks were built and grids were rolled out. He gradually acquired more factories, founding Amer in Hong Kong toward the end of the decade.Wang bought huge amounts of copper when it was cheap, processed it and built up large inventories that were then sold when prices went up.He grew into a larger-than-life character with a loose approach to the truth. A display in the company’s elaborate head office claimed Amer had mines in more than 20 countries in the world, almost certainly an exaggeration. Wang, who saw himself as a scholar, told visitors he read 100 books a year. The tycoon expected the same of his staff, who were given spaces on the office bookshelf to prove the point.“I caught the upward trend in China and the world. I was lucky to be born into a great age,” he said in a . “And, of course, I put plenty of effort into it. Normal people wouldn’t work as hard as I do. They are defeated by no one but themselves.”Around the start of the 2010s, he started to set up industrial parks across China — with practices that reflected the property excesses of the time, former employees and local officials said. His pitch to local governments was that they would be tenanted by high-tech manufacturers, generate lots of tax revenue and jobs, helping officials meet growth targets set by Beijing. In return, Wang’s enterprises received preferential treatment and subsidies. Occasionally, he resold the land.The rapid expansion made it easier to get financing and also in turn gave Amer more credibility with local authorities. Wang would then use the industrial land as collateral to get more loans and set up yet more business parks. The business model helped Wang to build a deep and wide network of government connections throughout China.Many of the people spoken to by Bloomberg said that it was the industrial parks — not the copper business — that drove most of Amer’s growth through the 2010s. However, many of the so-called high-tech parks were in fact filled with less-sophisticated manufacturers, according to people involved in the projects. Most of them fell short of expectations, and a number were never completed.The bulk of the more than 60 current legal claims against Wang are related to the business parks, according to Chinese data provider Tianyancha. Court records relating to cases in the northern province of Shandong shine a light on Wang’s methods. In one case, at the beginning of 2019, Amer urged a state-owned company to start building a 20-billion-yuan optoelectronic project even though it hadn’t obtained a construction permit, with the goal of having offices and show rooms to impress visiting government officials. It was never completed and the builder was left with a large unpaid bill, documents show.Multiple attempts to reach Wang via emails and phone calls were unsuccessful. His son, Wang Lizhong, who is listed as a director of Singapore-based commodity trader , also didn’t reply to an email seeking comment. In 2022, Amer had $112 billion of revenue and stockholder equity of $19.6 billion, according to its Fortune Global 500 ranking. At the time, Wang’s own fortune was as much as $18.6 billion.By then, though, Beijing’s harsh Covid-19 lockdowns — and the struggle to get the economy moving once restrictions ended — were already hitting metal demand. Wang’s rapid industrial expansion over decades had helped fuel overcapacity, and now made the contraction worse.His strategy of constant growth, using the industrial land as collateral for more credit, became impossible to sustain. Business park projects were paused, and local governments — worried about derelict land and buildings and missed fiscal goals — began to take legal action.Amer’s downfall was rapid. Chinese courts imposed spending limits on Wang twice in the second half of last year, although the restrictions were subsequently lifted. Then, in October last year, more than a dozen managers and traders .The company’s largest industrial park suspended operations the following month, and Wang’s holding was frozen by a court in Shandong, according to the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System.Wang’s exact whereabouts are unknown. He is believed by former associates to still be in China, although he hasn’t been seen in public for months.
