AMC deal to boost Wanda's global exposure China's richest shopping mall tycoon likes French suits, British yachts - and American movie theatres. Wang Jianlin, the billionaire soldier-turned-developer, whose company bought AMC Entertainment for $2.6bn earlier this week, says his latest acquisition is like a "huge advertisement" as his company, Dalian Wanda, takes to the international stage. The deal, creating the largest world's largest cinema chain by sales, is an overt symbol of China's growing purchasing power - AMC is a household name in the US, and once epitomised the all-American movie-watching experience. But the deal is small compared with the rest of Wanda's real estate empire, which includes assets of Rmb220bn ($35bn) and enough shopping mall space to cover Central Park four times over. As the US economic recovery flags, Chinese buyers have increasingly been seeing good deals there. Mr Wang, the founder of Wanda, says his purchase of AMC provided good value. "I'm a businessman, and every single investment I made is based on commercial benefits," he said at the signing ceremony. He aims to make Wanda, which he founded in 1988, a truly international business group that will last for "a century." Mr Wang is one of China's most powerful entrepreneurs and ranks sixth on the China Rich List produced by Hurun, the chronicle of all things wealthy Chinese like to splash out on, with a net worth of $7.1bn. The AMC deal also makes him one of the boldest, but it remains to be seen whether his success in China can be replicated overseas. The story of Wanda, which means "a thousand roads lead here," closely tracks China's own economic development over the past 20 years. Born to mid-level Communist party cadres in southern China in 1954 during the rule of Chairman Mao Zedong, Mr Wang joined the army as a teenager immediately after his middle school graduation. After several years on the Mongolian border, he was posted to Dalian, in north-east China, where he was educated and became involved with the development of a major economic zone. Sensing that the military life was not for him, he left the army in 1986 and founded Dalian Wanda two years later. His rags-to-riches story is typical of a generation of businessmen who rode the wave of China's phenomenal growth by investing in property in the early 1990s. Key to Wanda's early success are the "Wanda Plaza" complexes, which combine malls with housing and hotels, a pioneering concept at the time. Mr Wang's background in the military and ties to local officials would not have hurt either. Large commercial land sales in China are handled by local governments, which profit from the sales and also from the tax revenue generated by businesses such as shopping malls. "Wanda only deals with ambitious officials," Mr Wang said last month in an interview with the Southern Weekend newspaper. Some officials are so wishy-washy, we just won't go there. One of the ambitious officials that Wanda would have encountered while headquartered in Dalian is Bo Xilai, the now deposed politician who was mayor of Dalian from 1993 to 1999. Mr Bo was once a leading candidate for the Politburo but was stripped of his political offices last month and is being investigated by the Communist party for disciplinary violations. After Mr Bo's fall from grace, the Chinese internet was abuzz with rumours that Mr Wang had been taken in for questioning along with other Dalian entrepreneurs close to Mr Bo. Wanda denied the rumours, and Mr Wang told reporters that he had "nothing to do with the Dalian entrepreneurs who are under investigation." Whatever ties did or did not exist between Mr Wang and the ousted party chief, Wanda seems to have weathered well the political drama that has been unfolding around Mr Bo's fall. Local officials have been beating a path to Wanda's Beijing headquarters to ask for a Wanda Plaza to be built in their city, according to Southern Weekend. "The Wanda Plazas create jobs in the city as well as bringing in tax revenues, so city governments are very happy to have them," said Du Jinsong, real estate analyst at Credit Suisse. They have some role-model projects. While Chinese residential housing prices have slumped amid slowing economic growth in China, Wanda has been shielded from falling housing prices because of its focus on commercial real estate. The next step for Wanda will be a public listing in Shanghai, which is likely to get a boost from the AMC acquisition. Chinese regulations bar real estate companies from listing on Chinese stock exchanges, but with AMC in the family Wanda would have the option of listing its entertainment assets, analysts said. In addition to the flagship "Wanda Plaza" complexes, the conglomerate includes 28 five star hotels, 40 department stores, several large tourism resorts, and cultural projects such as a newspaper and a collaboration with the European entertainer Franco Dragone, creator of Cirque du Soleil. Even with AMC under his belt, Mr Wang himself may not be a fan of many of the movies shown in his cinemas, in either country. He eschews blockbusters and their lack of "traditional Chinese morality," and launched a Chinese film studio in 2007 to promote films with "positive" themes.