Chinese Stock Market Influencers Are Helping to Quell the Social

• Real-estate giant Evergrande is teetering on the verge of collapse, but has managed to fly below the radar on Chinese social media for over a week.
• This might be due to positive messages about the company being pushed on Weibo comment threads — akin to subreddits — penned by stock market influencers and analysts.
• An expert told Insider that these messages could be helping to quell discontent and pacify investors less in-the-know about Evergrande.

The financial troubles of Chinese real-estate juggernaut Evergrande are likely far from over, but social media influencers in China may be helping to calm the storm. 

Evergrande has more than $305 billion in liabilities — more than any other company in the world, per Markets Insider. Its failure to pay off its debts has caused jitters across Asian and international markets, prompting some analysts to term it China’s “Lehman Brothers moment.”

That Evergrande Chairman Xu Jiayin remains immensely wealthy amid Evergrande’s financial struggles has angered Chinese social media users on the country’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo. Weibo users were up in arms about a letter Xu sent to employees on September 21 that said the company would soon “walk out of the darkness” and encouraged staff to rally and work hard to make that happen.

Insider saw the Evergrande-letter topic thread, which is comparable to a subreddit, rake in more than 100,000 comments within the first 30 minutes of it being posted. Some posters on the topic thread called Xu “delusional” and even accused him of cheating workers of their paychecks. 

However, in the week since that letter was published, Xu and Evergrande have managed to avoid being listed on Weibo’s top trends, suggesting that chatter about the company has dropped off. 

That may be, in part, thanks to a concerted campaign by prominent Chinese financial influencers to quell the panic.