After the listing of Huishan Dairy in Hong Kong propelled its chairman Yang Kai to become the wealthiest man in his home province of Liaoning, he described his business as a “dream factory”.
“Creating China’s most trusted dairy brand is our enterprise’s dream,” Mr Yang said in 2015. But abandoned Huishan projects in rural China show signs that the dream was under strain even before the company’s shares — against which he borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars — plunged 85 per cent with no warning in Hong Kong last month.
In the Kangping development zone in Liaoning province, where Huishan in 2014 said it was investing up to Rmb8.8bn ($1.2bn), a red metal archway emblazoned with the name “China Huishan Dairy’s Dairy City” leads only to a few abandoned shacks. The only cows visible in the zone are a herd of sculptures by a roadside.