The whole network has been opened to protect rights and carry plagiarism reports
The myth of Qin Hui, the former boss of heaven and earth, ended with a life of ups and downs. On May 9, the Chinese billionaire pleaded guilty in a U.S. court for engaging in political donation fraud and was sentenced to six months in prison before being deported.
Now 56 years old, he has to give up his family and career in the United States, and his dream in the United States is shattered, which also indicates the sinking of his business empire.
Qin Hui is a typical nouveau riche, and his legendary entrepreneurial history has also become the epitome of the myth of the first batch of rich people after China's reform and opening up.
How did an ordinary businessman become famous in just over a decade by taking over Beijing's well-known nightclub Heaven and Earth, and then making large-scale acquisitions of listed companies and cinema chains, creating a business empire spanning multiple industries with assets of more than 10 billion yuan.
However, the glory of the commercial kingdom was only a flash in the pan. After all kinds of scandals and losses, Xingmei is now a pool of stagnant water, and its assets were put on the auction table a few years ago.
Qin Hui's success and fall highlight the characteristics of China's early market economy, which came quickly and lost quickly. In the pursuit of profit maximization, business ethics and legal regulation are neglected.
But in the long run, this kind of blind expansion and reckless business model is destined to fail.
In 1991, Qin Hui came to Shenzhen from his hometown in Sichuan and began to get involved in import and export trade. Three years later, he founded Zhuojing Trading Company and began his business adventures.
In 2000, Qin Hui saw the opportunities brought by the Internet and began to invest in communication and network companies through Zhuojing. However, what really made him famous was the unexpected acquisition of the well-known Beijing nightclub - Heaven and Earth in 2003, which was very profitable at the time.
At that time, Heaven and Earth and Dongguan Prince Hotel were known as the most famous "Golden Caves" in China. Extravagance and waste reached its peak here. The consumption of one night in heaven and earth is even as high as hundreds of thousands of yuan.
This gave Qin Hui huge cash flow and business resources. Relying on his connections in heaven and earth, Qin Hui soon entered the film and television media industry, and in 2010, he took control of Hong Kong-listed companies Han Media and Xingmei International, becoming a predator in the media industry in one fell swoop.
However, what heaven and earth brought to Qin Hui was not only wealth and connections, but also negative influences. In 2010, heaven and earth were seized, and Qin Hui's reputation also fell to the bottom.
In the following ten years, Qin Hui tried to whitewash his image, but he could not completely get rid of the notoriety of heaven and earth. This also restricts the development of his business empire to a certain extent.
In its heyday, Xingmei had thousands of cinemas and hundreds of cinemas, competing with Wanda. However, behind this rapid expansion, there are huge risks.
In pursuit of annexation, Star Beauty grossly overvalued its assets and was heavily indebted. At the same time, there is confusion in management, loose internal control, and the rights and interests of employees are not protected. All kinds of hidden dangers finally broke out under the epidemic.
In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic forced Chinese cinemas to close for months. This directly caused SMI's net profit to plummet from HK$941 million in 2019 to HK$538 million in 2020, and began to have a debt crisis.
Xingmei Cinema has emerged with problems such as work stoppage, arrears of employees' wages, arrears of payments to suppliers, and lawsuits for breach of contract. In 2021, Xingmei's unsuccessful attempt to return to the A-share market to raise funds was unsuccessful, and it was ordered to delist by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 14 of the same year.
Subsequently, Xingmei's assets were put on the auction table to pay off the huge debt. So far, the empire that Qin Hui spent 20 years creating in the business empire has collapsed in just one or two years.
The rapid collapse of Qin Hui's business empire reflects the blindness and recklessness in the process of commercial expansion. At the same time, it also highlights the shortcomings of the development of China's cinema industry.
The combination of these problems led to the fiasco of the Star American system. Internal management chaos is the superficial cause, but the deeper problem lies in the non-standard operation of the entire industry and the lack of supervision.