Q&A

Host: Recently the U.S. media exposed that there are 16 members of the House of Representatives and Senate that suggested conducting a rigorous review of the American cinema chain acquired by Wanda. With this in mind how is Chinese culture to spread? Ultimately, what can be relied on in the spread?

Wang Jianlin: This incident proves two points. First is that we’ve got a bit of influence in the U.S. We were not nominated for sanctions before, but now they think this kid is getting too big for the U.S. That is the first reason.

The second and more important reason is that the U.S. is a multi-party system. They have their own separate television and radio channels and say whatever they please. Congressmen and Senators writing joint letters should not be thought of as something so “sacred”. If there is one buddy mentioning a proposal, when there is a meeting and people are plenty, it’s passed to get signatures and to get face so the proposal can be passed up. I think Congress is a place of speaking, even a place of disorderly speaking. It and the changes of the U.S. government’s attitude are two different things, so I think we still need to wait and see Mr. Trump’s attitude towards Chinese cultural enterprises after he takes office.  

Yesterday, I met with the President of Motion Picture Association of America who said he wants to meet with Mr. Trump and asked me what message I would like delivered. I told him to tell Mr. Trump that I have ten billion dollars of investments in the United States and more than 20,000 employees there who wouldn’t have anything to eat should things be handled poorly, and nothing else mattered. At least in the film and television industry, you must understand that the growth of English films depends on the Chinese market.

Question: Wanda’s “The Great Wall” comes out in theatres soon. Will you go see it? What are your expectations for the box office?

Wang Jianlin: You take me as an entertainment entrepreneur and have asked such specific questions of me. As for the box office numbers, I don’t think I’m able to answer you on this one. It should come from our cinema company, as I don’t know how much they set as their target or expectations. Honestly, this is not under the scope of my management, so I really cannot say how much is expected, but I believe it will be decent.

China’s fill market seems to be in a large decline. In reality, it isn’t declining, but this is the year of the actual Chinese film market. A few years ago was an illusion as I said last year. All that had to be done was to get rid of the box office fraud, and the bubble popped. Cinema having a 40% growth for three consecutive years, do you think it’s really possible? With an economic growth rate of 6% and cultural growth a little bit higher, a growth rate of somewhere in the teens or twenty is probably a more realistic level. So a lot of films exaggerated along with the issue of box office subsidies. However, today I can tell you something with certainty, next year will definitely be a big year for Chinese film. Whether the authorities or everyone in this industry, this year calmed down, and thought seriously about what would be the next step, so I believe next year our industry will still be ushering in growth in the double digits.

Question: Hello Chairman Wang. Once this year, you said that with Wanda here in China, Disney would not profit within ten years in China. Do you still hold this viewpoint? Disney has been able to succeed because it has always upheld an expression, which is a wish that the hearts of adults will forever remain kind and innocent, so it’s been a success. However, many people in China do movies or parks well, but they are thinking about how to earn money, making success hard. So do you think there are any lessons worth learning from Disney?

Wang Jianlin: This question you’re asking… I’ve already reconciled with Disney. Have you not seen that when I was in the United States I went to visit the Disney Headquarters? Did I not also go see the Disney in Shanghai? We have close group photos, and everything has already been reconciled. Choose another topic. As we say in Beijing，there isn’t any good stirring up this matter. I won’t answer this question for you.

I’ll respond to your second question, which was asked to the point. Hollywood not wanting to make money is not real. Disney was crushed by Universal Studios a few years ago. I expect this year Disney will become the world’s top box office enterprise.

Disney has one of the greatest features. The number of films made is very small, only seven or eight per year, but each has a high box office. It is actually reliant on animation and a good story. And Disney has another feature, which is that they’ve never worked with other people to co-produce a film. Why? This is because Disney has its own IP image products, intellectual property rights, etc. Disney is not making money on the films. It is a marginal effect, selling its IP products, and the IP products are done very cleverly. Only physical stores have them, they are not sold online. This inside knowledge is very deep and needs to be studied. Disney is able to tug at people’s heartstrings in creating its animated IP images. But you shouldn’t believe that everything Disney’s done has been a success either. In fact, the average success rate of created IP images is 1/100, meaning that of 100 creations only one is successful, and those brands that become internationally well-known are becoming fewer. So, this is slow to carve out for us at Wanda.

Question: Under the current economic circumstances, in what aspects does Wanda see potential, what are you doing well, and in what are you succeeding?

Wang Jianlin: In the recent two years, there has been a trend in the Chinese economy, which is polarization. It no longer resembles the times when economic growth was 9 and 10%; 95% of enterprises were doing well. Now the phenomenon of polarization has appeared; sad is sad or even worse, but good just gets better and better. The Matthew effect is getting stronger and stronger.

This polarization is in fact the inevitable result of competition up to a certain stage. Slowly, this will be the future. The reason Wanda is able to stick in the industry is the maintenance of good growth, for which now in 2016 we have seen an average annual growth of over 35% over the last decade. Especially after such a large-scale development, it is very rare in this world to be able to maintain such high-speed growth. So when I travel abroad, foreign business leaders have often asked how I can do it, and after mulling it over and considering how I’ve done it, “innovate” is the word.

I’m always a step or two head of others. When everyone in the country was doing land, I was doing real estate. When everyone was studying commercial real estate, I transitioned to the film industry and then to the tourism and sports industries. Three years ago, when I bought Infront, nobody was optimistic about it, asking what I was doing spending billions of Euros on a sports company. But through Infront, we slowly entered the field of sports and landed a lot of sporting events in China. Next year we will do even more. Our goal is to land about 10-12 world-class sporting events in China, giving the sports companies something to do every month and income from whatever comes.

It’s very easy to succeed in something you do, but to do it excellently is extremely difficult. To become a successful person, especially to become an excellent person, you must think of something nobody else has thought of before and go and do something that hasn’t been done before. It’s