Xin Jie

Xin Jie was born in June 1966 and holds the titles of professor-level senior engineer and senior economist; his career has been rooted in Shenzhen’s state-owned asset system. After graduating from Shenyang University of Technology in 1988, he joined Shenzhen Foreign Trade Group and later moved to Shenzhen Great Wall Property Management Company; both companies were originally under the Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Shenzhen Great Wall Property was once the property company of Shenzhen Great Wall Investment Holding Co., Ltd., and Xin Jie rose within the Great Wall Investment Holding system to deputy general manager. In October 2009 he moved to Tianjian Group, controlled by Shenzhen state capital with urban construction, comprehensive development and urban services as its main businesses, and after eight years there rose to Party secretary and chairman. In September 2017, Xin Jie was transferred to Shenzhen Metro; in October that year, former chairman Lin Maode retired on reaching the age limit and Xin Jie succeeded him. Shenzhen Metro is a large wholly state-owned enterprise directly managed by the Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission; it is responsible for more than 95% of Shenzhen’s rail transit construction and operation, and its business also covers investment and financing, station-city development, resource operations, property management, and engineering survey and design.

Shenzhen Metro had long studied and drawn on the experience of Hong Kong’s MTR, and by the time Xin Jie took office it had developed a “rail + property” model, using property development to fund rail transit construction. Xin Jie’s earlier experience in property development matched Shenzhen Metro’s development trajectory. In the early years of his tenure, Shenzhen Metro’s results rose steadily: operating revenue increased from 14.094 billion yuan in 2017 to 20.90 billion yuan in 2019, and annual net profit from 6.648 billion yuan in 2017 to 11.667 billion yuan in 2019. The simultaneous growth in scale and profit owed much to Vanke’s contribution: in the first half of 2017, Shenzhen Metro, on behalf of Shenzhen state capital, spent about 66.4 billion yuan to take over the Vanke shares held by China Resources Land and China Evergrande, becoming the largest shareholder; this ended the “Baoneng–Vanke battle” and brought Vanke into its statistical reporting scope. When Vanke’s board was re-elected in June 2020, Xin Jie became a non-independent director; in the first few years he repeatedly stated publicly that he would not intervene in Vanke’s specific operations.

After 2020, the real estate industry gradually entered an adjustment phase and Shenzhen Metro’s results reached a turning point: that year revenue was 20.828 billion yuan, down 0.77% year on year, and net profit was 11.102 billion yuan, down 4.84%. In 2021 revenue fell further to 16.397 billion yuan, a decline of 21.28%, and net profit was about 2.890 billion yuan, down sharply by 73.97%. Revenue rebounded in 2022 and 2023, but net profit continued to decline; in 2024 revenue fell again and the company recorded a net loss of 33.566 billion yuan. On 30 June 2023, Xin Jie attended Vanke’s 2022 annual shareholders’ meeting as chairman of Shenzhen Metro, saying that as a shareholder he was pleased that Vanke had held the bottom line of safe operations, and that time had proved the foresight of Vanke’s management. In late October 2023, risks in the property sector began to spread to mixed-ownership enterprises and Vanke fell into its first credit crisis; on the 27th of that month, Vanke’s board approved Xin Jie becoming vice chairman of the board. Caixin had previously learned that the move was intended to calm the capital markets, and that Xin Jie did not actually take part in Vanke’s management. At an online meeting with financial institutions convened by Vanke on 6 November 2023, Xin Jie said that Shenzhen Metro would take over some of Vanke’s urban renewal projects in Shenzhen, with the transaction value expected to exceed 10 billion yuan, to inject new liquidity into Vanke, and said that “if further needed, we will study and introduce other measures to provide Vanke with a continuous stream of support”.

On 27 January 2025, Vanke announced that Xin Jie had been elected chairman of the board, succeeding 60-year-old Yu Liang, who remained executive vice president and a director of the company. According to Caixin, the personnel change marked an abrupt intervention by Shenzhen state capital ahead of the Spring Festival holiday and an early start to the turnover of Vanke’s senior management team; Vanke’s board serves three-year terms, the last re-election had been in June 2023, and the current board should have served until June 2026. After the “Baoneng–Vanke battle” ended in 2017, Shenzhen Metro became Vanke’s largest shareholder and for several years did not intervene in or participate in Vanke’s specific operations; by early 2025 this power arrangement had come to an end. Caixin reported that Shenzhen would fulfil its local responsibility by dispatching personnel to take over Vanke comprehensively, and would combine market-based means and fiscal tools to help it defuse its debt risks.

On February 5, 2025, Vanke issued an internal notice announcing the proposed appointment of ten new operating and management personnel, most of whom came from Shenzhen Metro or its subsidiaries. On the evening of the same day, Vanke issued an internal notice clarifying the division of responsibilities of the new senior management team: Xin Jie would preside over the overall work of the Vanke group, and Yu Liang, as executive vice president, would assist Xin Jie in his work and be responsible for company strategy and real estate macro research.

At the same time as Xin Jie became chairman of Vanke, the head of the Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission stated that it would support Shenzhen Metro in promoting Vanke’s sound development by all possible market-based and law-based means, and would further reduce Shenzhen Metro’s debt-to-asset ratio through direct capital injections, asset transfers and other methods. On 21 February 2025, Vanke announced that Shenzhen Metro planned to provide it with shareholder loans totalling 4.2 billion yuan to repay maturing public debt, with a term of three years and an interest rate of 2.34%. Caixin reported that by then Shenzhen Metro had helped Vanke defuse risks through project acquisitions, shareholder loans and other means, with two shareholder loans alone directly providing Vanke with 7 billion yuan.

According to what Caixin had previously learned from multiple sources, Xin Jie lost contact in September 2025, and in the middle and latter part of that month word spread in Shenzhen that he had been taken away by the authorities to assist in an investigation. On 13 October 2025, Vanke announced a change of chairman: Xin Jie resigned as chairman in writing and was succeeded by Shenzhen Metro general manager Huang Liping. That month, the “Leadership Message” section of Shenzhen Metro’s website removed Xin Jie’s photo and name, leaving only the title “Group Party Secretary and Chairman” in the signature. In November of the same year, Shenzhen Metro’s legal representative changed from Xin Jie to Huang Liping. On 29 April 2026, Shenzhen Metro announced that Xin Jie no longer served as chairman, that the chairman position was temporarily vacant and the new appointee would be disclosed in due course, and that the personnel change would not have a material adverse impact on its daily management, production and operations, or debt-servicing capacity.

Shenzhen Metro’s profitability and liquidity remained under sustained pressure. In 2025 the company posted a loss for the second consecutive year, with the loss widening 10.82% year on year to about 37.197 billion yuan. As of the end of 2025, short-term borrowings and non-current liabilities due within one year totalled about 36.183 billion yuan, up 57.12% from the end of 2024, and net assets were about 290.499 billion yuan, shrinking by nearly 11 billion yuan from the end of 2024. On 29 April 2026, Shenzhen Metro announced that its 2025 loss was equivalent to 12.34% of its net assets for the same period, because its associate Vanke had suffered a huge loss during the period, forcing Shenzhen Metro to recognise losses on its long-term equity investment in Vanke and make impairment provisions. After Xin Jie’s departure, Huang Liping ranked first in Shenzhen Metro’s senior management team; he also serves as deputy Party secretary and a director of Shenzhen Metro, and was born in 1968.