Aric Chen(@aricchen):Exclusive footage shows a former Financial Times journalist living for nearly three years on the doorstep of a £210 million London mansion tied to Evergrande founder Xu Jiayin, while the property sits empty. Anders Fernstedt, 58, has camped on the porch and steps of the Hyde Park house since around 2023. Shopping bags, flowers, furniture, and a tent mark the entrance. Neighbors treat him as unpaid security. In an exclusive interview, he said caretakers occasionally ask him to move, but most of the time they prefer him there. He described the arrangement as temporary and said he stays ready for the next chapter. Fernstedt’s background is unusual for someone sleeping outside. He wrote for the Financial Times, fact-checked for The Economist, worked in a U.S. research lab, and in 2002 lectured at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing on Wi-Fi and mobile networks. He says the street life gives him time and freedom he did not have before. Recent coverage has drawn visitors from overseas. The house sold for £210 million in 2020 and was later linked to Xu Jiayin. After Evergrande’s collapse under China’s property crackdown, it was listed but found no buyer. Xu, once among China’s richest men, has been detained as authorities pursue the developer’s massive debts. The empty mansion and the man on its steps illustrate how capital that left China under the property boom now sits idle abroad, while the founder faces the consequences at home. ACI — Aric Chen

2026.10.08 18:58

Exclusive footage shows a former Financial Times journalist living for nearly three years on the doorstep of a £210 million London mansion tied to Evergrande founder Xu Jiayin, while the property sits empty. Anders Fernstedt, 58, has camped on the porch and steps of the Hyde Park house since around 2023. Shopping bags, flowers, furniture, and a tent mark the entrance. Neighbors treat him as unpaid security. In an exclusive interview, he said caretakers occasionally ask him to move, but most of the time they prefer him there. He described the arrangement as temporary and said he stays ready for the next chapter. Fernstedt’s background is unusual for someone sleeping outside. He wrote for the Financial Times, fact-checked for The Economist, worked in a U.S. research lab, and in 2002 lectured at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing on Wi-Fi and mobile networks. He says the street life gives him time and freedom he did not have before. Recent coverage has drawn visitors from overseas. The house sold for £210 million in 2020 and was later linked to Xu Jiayin. After Evergrande’s collapse under China’s property crackdown, it was listed but found no buyer. Xu, once among China’s richest men, has been detained as authorities pursue the developer’s massive debts. The empty mansion and the man on its steps illustrate how capital that left China under the property boom now sits idle abroad, while the founder faces the consequences at home. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights

Aric Chen@aricchen

2026.08.20 04:18

"Harmed the integrity of state functionaries in the performance of their duties." That line is in the Shenzhen court's verdict handed down this morning against Hui Ka Yan, also known as Xu Jiayin. The verdict names none of them. Hui got life, political rights stripped for life, all personal property confiscated. Evergrande Group was fined 8.82 billion yuan, Hengda Real Estate 7 billion. Five executives drew eighteen years down to six. I read Chinese verdicts for who appears in them before I read the sentence, and this one has a hole where a name should be. The court found that Evergrande took control of financial institutions through bribery among other means, then illegally drew credit and insurance money out of them for its own use. Corporate bribery is one of the eight counts he was convicted on. A bribe has a receiving end. The judgment convicts on that count and names nobody on the other side of it. That is the part worth arguing over, because the fraud window the court certified runs 2016 to 2021. On 24 October 2018, inside that window, the Central United Front Work Department and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce put Hui on their list of a hundred outstanding private entrepreneurs of the reform era, chosen, in their announcement's words, through layer-by-layer screening and strict vetting, and required to obey the law. He sat on the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 2013 to 2023. He was his own company's Party secretary. The arithmetic is harsher than the sentence. Today's fines come to 15.82 billion yuan. Evergrande's last published balance sheet, for end-2022, carried 2.4374 trillion in liabilities, 721 billion of that contract liabilities, money buyers had paid in advance for flats. Beijing published the fine to the decimal. It has not published the name of anyone who took the money. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights

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