Guo Jun

Guo Jun is a professional manager in China’s real estate industry. In 1988 he worked at the Shenzhen Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection, and about two years later, feeling it was difficult to advance, he joined Vanke in 1990, having asked an acquaintance to recommend him. At Vanke he set up a research office and served as its director, working on corporate culture and research; around 1991 he also took part in founding Vanke Weekly and served as its first editor-in-chief. During this period he was already deputy director of the general office, and in 1992 he became general manager of a regional company, with Lin Shaozhou succeeding him as editor-in-chief of Vanke Weekly. According to his own account in 2002, Yu Liang, his classmate from the same year at Peking University, joined Vanke on his introduction and later became Vanke’s president; Lin Shaozhou, Wu Chong, Ding Changfeng and other Peking University graduates also joined Vanke one after another and each developed their careers there. He was once regarded as Wang Shi’s successor.

Guo Jun later served in posts including general manager of Tianjin Vanke, and by his own account worked on project development in the real estate industry for about ten years, dealing with matters such as sales, construction plans and property management. In April 2000 he joined Beijing Huayuan Real Estate Company, but because he “did not fit in”, he submitted his resignation after little more than half a year. Reportedly, in 2001 Yu Liang proposed to Wang Shi that Guo Jun, the Peking University alumnus who had brought him into Vanke years earlier, leave Huayuan and return to Vanke as president, with Yu himself giving up the post and becoming vice president again, but Wang Shi did not let Guo Jun return.

Guo Jun subsequently became general manager of China Resources Land Limited’s Beijing company (whose predecessor was Huayuan Real Estate Company), among other posts, and served as an executive director of China Resources Land. According to a report in April 2002, outsiders largely regarded this change as a step backwards, while Guo Jun himself said it was hard to judge whether it was good or bad, and said that in his new post he would be responsible for organising, packaging and promoting the core technologies of China Resources Land’s real estate business, supporting development in other regions, and letting young people take on more of the specific work. He also admitted that after two years of change the company still had many shortcomings and that quite a few plans and tasks had yet to be realised.

On the issue of customer service around 2002, Guo Jun advocated communicating with customers sincerely but required them to provide a basis for their claims, saying that as a professional manager he could not pay out money merely because someone demanded it. He believed that the real estate industry had been developing in a truly market-based way for less than ten years, that most developers could abide by the law and their contracts but could hardly avoid product flaws and service shortcomings entirely, and that government administration, policies and regulations, and industry support were also imperfect. He argued that high housing prices in Beijing were to a considerable extent a redistribution of wealth, enabling relocated residents, farmers and others to obtain more compensation; taking Huaqing Jiayuan as an example, he said the project could have been designed to sell at eight thousand or even ten thousand yuan per square metre and still find buyers, with higher profits, but in reality about 300,000 square metres were built and the selling price was kept at around six thousand yuan per square metre, which he called the conscience of a developer. He designated 2002 as the year of customer service, hoping to build trust in the industry between buyers and sellers.

Guo Jun once described Wang Shi and Ren Zhiqiang as highly influential figures in the real estate industry, believing that the two had a great deal in common in essence: in their youth during the “Cultural Revolution” era they did not receive a formal education, and afterwards they served in the army, studied and went into business, all doing business for the state and hoping to give back to society; although both could control their companies, they were only the leaders of their companies, not their owners. He said the biggest difference between the two lay in their backgrounds: one had learned more of the Hong Kong model in Shenzhen, while the other had learned more about macro-level management in Beijing.