Elliot Wilson

Slums for the masses, fortunes for the few

Property speculation in China

issue 03 November 2007

Hu Bin is your archetypal Chinese real-estate entrepre­neur. Built like a bull, with a huge, moon-shaped head, a permanent grin and tiny, nicotine-blackened teeth, he is also the embodiment of Beijing’s sudden determination to use its huge capital reserves to buy the world.

Despite an estimated £5 billion fortune, Hu Bin would normally have remained a low-key figure, even in China.

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