[3] In 2016, Wang reached a deal with FIFA to launch the China Cup, in which national football teams compete in Nanning, Guangxi each year.

[2][6] Wang Jianlin was born on 24 October 1954, in Cangxi County, Guangyuan, Sichuan,[7][note 1] as the oldest of five sons.

[8] His father Wang Yiquan was a peasant who fought for Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army during the Long March (October 1934–October 1935).

[8][9] Retired from the army just before the Korean War, his father, working for the forestry service, and mother Qin Jialin settled in a village in Jinchuan County, Sichuan, where their son would grow up.

[7] After 17 years in the army, in 1986 Wang started working as the office administrator for the Xigang District in the city of Dalian.

[14] His conglomerate company owns over 21.57 million square meters of prime commercial real estate across the Chinese mainland, consisting of 168 Wanda Shopping Plazas, 82 luxury hotels, 213 cinemas, 99 department stores, and 54 karaoke centers.

He flew in leading Hollywood celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Beckinsale, and John Travolta to help launch a US$8 billion mini-Hollywood in the coastal city of Qingdao in January 2014.

[24] The Economist has called Wang "a man of Napoleonic ambition", citing his military background in the PLA, where he rose from border guard to regimental commander.

[25] At the age of 15, Wang started his 17-year service with the People's Liberation Army, initially as a border guard before rising to become a regimental commander.

[25] He is the vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, and has been a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference since 2008.

[31] In 2017 he donated CNY 20 million to help 2017 Sichuan landslide victims, it was speculated that he empathized especially with the region having grown up in Ngawa Prefecture himself.

[41] A year later, Forbes ranked him 18th in its 2017 World's Billionaires list, making him the richest man in China with a net worth of US$31.3 billion.

[43] In 2020, Wang tumbled down the rich list as his real estate empire and movie theatre chains both sharply declined in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[46] Wang Sicong is currently a board member of the Wanda Group and a venture capitalist in China through his Beijing-based private equity fund, Prometheus Capital (普思投资).