A Breakfast Roundtable with Founder of Vanke Wang Shi

Shi Wang,
Founder of Vanke; President of WWF China

Mr. WANG Shi Founder of Vanke President of WWF China Honorary President of Asian Rowing Federation Chairman of Shenzhen Foundation of International Exchange and Cooperation Advisor of World Canal City Organization Wang Shi has never been afraid to climb. He built China Vanke Group, the organization he founded in 1984, into China’s largest residential real estate company, now worth $34 billion. But Wang is no mere businessman. As a mountaineer, Wang has climbed Mount Everest twice and, at age 66, became the oldest person ever to scale the tallest mountains on all seven continents and to visit the North and South Poles. Over the years, he worked very hard on a wide range of outdoor sports, including paragliding, skiing, rowing. As the first Chinese non-official elected as the President of Asian Rowing Federation, he helped community rowing in China gain unprecedented growth from almost zero to 300 rowing clubs within four years. But Wang’s great and lasting accomplishment will likely be his commitment to environmental causes. During his expeditions to Everest, he led cleanup efforts to clear refuse left behind by other climbers and he participated in an expedition to Antarctica to highlight the effect of climate change on polar ice caps. He has led China’s Private Sector Delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference for thirteen years and has served as UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, campaigning for climate change issues. After China announced its peak carbon neutrality goal, Mr. Wang Shi was determined to start his own business again. He founded Biosphere 3, a business platform aimed at empowering urban communities to become carbon neutral. And from his position on the board of the World Wildlife Foundation US and China, Wang has advocated for endangered species around the world through education, habitat preservation, and environmental awareness. Wang’s environmental consciousness has gained fullest expression through a public awareness campaign called Global Canal Row. It rallied together amateur rowers around the world to advocate conservation of canals around the world and promote healthy lifestyle in canal cities. He spearheaded China Vanke’s sustainable building initiatives by requiring all of its structures to achieve China’s Green Building Evaluation certification, which requires residential buildings to conserve water, energy, materials, and other resources. His mandate has already made a difference: China Vanke has built more than half of the “green buildings” constructed in China, and in 2018 alone, the company is projected to have reduced its cumulative carbon dioxide emissions by 5.3 million tons. Mr. Wang Shi was a visiting scholar at Harvard University from 2011 to 2013, and at Cambridge University and Oxford University respectively from 2014 to 2016. He is currently a visiting fellow at Hebrew University in 2018 and focuses on the studies of Judaism and East Asia. He is the author of Soul in The Journey, The Eighth Peak, The Journey and The Dream, The Vanke Way: Lessons on Driving Turbulent Change from a Global Real Estate Giant, and other books.