Former Chinese property tycoon Hui Ka Yan, once the richest man in China, has now been sentenced to life in prison.

On August 20, the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court found Hui guilty in a first-instance ruling of multiple offenses, including fundraising fraud, fraudulent securities issuance, failure to disclose material information, and embezzlement. He was sentenced to life in prison, stripped of his political rights for life, and had all of his personal assets confiscated. Evergrande Group and Evergrande Real Estate were also fined.

For many overseas viewers, Hui Ka Yan is best known as a Chinese property tycoon. But before his downfall, he was one of China’s wealthiest people and one of the most prominent entrepreneurs of the country’s real estate boom.

Hui was born in rural Henan. After China restored its national college entrance exam, he passed the exam and entered Wuhan Iron and Steel University. He later worked in the steel industry before moving into real estate in the mid-1990s. In 1996, he founded Evergrande.

China was urbanizing rapidly at the time, and demand for housing was surging. Evergrande seized the opportunity, expanding from a property developer in Guangzhou into a nationwide real estate giant through rapid land purchases, construction, and sales.

In 2017, Hui became China’s richest man, with a personal fortune of around $42 billion.

His lifestyle at the time was just as extravagant. Private jets, luxury homes, a private entertainment troupe, and corporate dividends worth billions of dollars made Hui one of the most lavishly wealthy businessmen in China.

At the same time, Evergrande was moving far beyond real estate.

The company expanded into finance, tourism, healthcare, electric vehicles, and other industries. By 2020, its sales had reached around 700 billion yuan, or roughly $100 billion.

But a business empire of that size was not built by slowly accumulating profits.

Real estate is a capital-intensive business. Developers have to pay for land and construction upfront, then wait for homes to sell and the money to come back in. Evergrande pushed that cycle as fast as it could, relying heavily on bank loans, bonds, commercial bills, money owed to suppliers, and proceeds from presold homes to fund its expansion.

Sell one project, collect the money, and put it into the next. At the same time, borrow more to repay existing debt.

As long as sales kept growing and financing remained available, the model could keep running.

Evergrande took that strategy to an extreme. As the company grew, so did its debt.

By the end of 2022, Evergrande’s total liabilities had reached 2.44 trillion yuan, or about $340 billion. Its total assets stood at roughly 1.84 trillion yuan, leaving it with negative net assets of 599.1 billion yuan. It had only about 14.3 billion yuan in cash and cash equivalents.

By then, the company’s actual financial condition could no longer support its enormous scale.

The court found that from 2016 to 2021, Evergrande Group, Evergrande Real Estate, and Hui Ka Yan had repeatedly and on a massive scale inflated assets and concealed liabilities, using falsified financial statements to hide the company’s true financial condition.

Those false figures were later used in fraudulent securities issuance and the failure to disclose material information. The case also involved offenses including illegal absorption of public deposits and fundraising fraud.

The court also found that Evergrande used bribery to gain control over financial institutions and illegally obtained credit and insurance funds for the company. Hui himself was found to have used his position as chairman of Evergrande Real Estate to organize financial fraud and embezzle company assets under the guise of dividends.

The financing model that had powered Evergrande’s rapid expansion was becoming harder and harder to sustain.

Then, in 2020, China introduced measures known as the “three red lines,” imposing tighter limits on property developers’ debt and financing.

For Evergrande, its most important source of funding was now under pressure.

New financing became increasingly difficult to secure. But the land Evergrande had already purchased still had to be developed. Construction had to continue. Suppliers had to be paid. And old debts still had to be repaid.

In 2021, Evergrande defaulted on its debt, and the crisis became public.

But when Evergrande collapsed, China was dealing with more than a company carrying 2.44 trillion yuan in debt.

Behind that debt were millions of homebuyers who had already paid for homes that had yet to be completed.

China’s property market has long relied on presales, meaning many families pay a large portion of the purchase price before their homes are finished. When a developer runs out of money, what gets left unfinished is not just a construction project. It is a home that an ordinary family has already paid for.

That is why China did not simply leave Evergrande’s housing projects to be sorted out through the normal liquidation process.

In 2022, China introduced a special lending program to ensure housing deliveries. Policy banks provided funding to eligible projects, with the money kept in dedicated accounts and subject to strict oversight. The funds were intended specifically for homes that had already been sold but had not yet been delivered.

Evergrande itself could enter restructuring, liquidation, or bankruptcy proceedings. But individual housing projects still had to be completed.

According to the latest figures disclosed by Evergrande Real Estate, more than 1.24 million homes had been delivered by the end of July 2026, putting the overall delivery rate above 99 percent.

That is an important part of the Evergrande story.

The company itself was not brought back to life. Its debts still had to be dealt with. But the housing projects were treated separately, so that the collapse of the developer would not simply leave homebuyers with unfinished homes.

“There are international parallels—though the mechanisms differ greatly. During the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. allowed Lehman to fail but bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep mortgage markets alive. The logic is not identical, but the strategic mindset is the same: when a corporate collapse threatens either financial stability or basic livelihoods, authorities must draw a line between what can be liquidated and what must be protected.”

China’s property boom is over. But the property market has not stopped.

It is going through a slow and profound transformation — moving away from the debt-fueled expansion of the past and toward a market driven more by actual housing demand than ever-rising leverage.