Zhu Baoquan

Zhu Baoquan is chairman, executive director and general manager of Onewo. In October 2019, Zhu Baoquan, then CEO of Vanke Service, predicted in an interview that commercial and enterprise business revenue that year could reach 4 billion yuan and residential business revenue about 9 billion yuan; he said Vanke Service adhered to managing buildings as its primary positioning, and that other value-added services simply followed naturally. At the end of 2022, Vanke created two co-president positions, held respectively by Zhang Hai, chief partner of the Development and Operations Business Group, and Zhu Baoquan, chairman of Onewo, with the two overseeing the property development business and the operating and services business respectively.

In the letter to shareholders in Onewo’s 2022 annual report, signed by Zhu Baoquan as chairman, executive director and general manager, he reviewed the impact of the property industry’s winter on property management companies. He mentioned that since 2019 the company had built up a diversified customer base to hedge the risk of a single source of business, and served leading companies in sectors such as the internet, finance and high-end manufacturing through its Cushwake unit; in 2022, revenue from third parties in property and facility management services was 6.4 billion yuan, accounting for 84.8%, with 16 new Fortune Global 500 and China 500 customers and 8 new unicorn customers. He said that in 2022 the number of Butterfly City (Diecheng) units grew from 459 to 584, efficiency upgrades were completed in 38 Butterfly City units covering 329 projects, generating revenue of 820 million yuan, with related upgrade investment of about 160 million yuan, achieving efficiency gains of more than 30 million yuan that year; AIoT solutions generated revenue of 1.38 billion yuan, up 13.9% year on year, and BPaaS solutions achieved revenue of 990 million yuan, up 56.7% year on year.

In October 2023, at a media exchange held by Vanke in Xi’an, Zhu Baoquan, as co-president of Vanke Group and chief partner of the property business group, presented the progress of Onewo’s “butterfly city strategy”: in the first half of the year, Onewo’s “butterfly cities” grew from 584 at the start of the year to 601; by the end of June, supply-chain upgrades were under way in 150 “butterfly cities”, covering more than 1,000 residential projects. In the same period, he used the “Yanxuanjia” brand as an example of the efficiency improvements brought by butterfly cities: within a 3-kilometre service radius, the brand provides renovation and refurbishment services for homes more than 10 years old, aims for 100% customer satisfaction, integrates the supply chain starting from the floor plans of older homes, and offers partial renovation products suited to specific floor plans that can be delivered in a standardised way; Onewo had focused on promoting the Yanxuanjia business in 63 “butterfly cities”, with cumulative contracts from January to September of nearly 10,000 households, up more than 150% year on year. According to a Caixin Online report in October 2023, Zhu Baoquan said that Yanxuanjia used the acquaintance economy to carry out home renovation business within “butterfly cities”, focusing on partial renovation of homes, and was still at the trial stage at the time. He believed that property companies sit at the intersection of the real estate industry chain and the broader consumer services industry, and must clarify their positioning, strengthen their independence and build high-growth businesses in residential consumer services; he also predicted that the industry would see the “five transformations” trend of IoT-enabled positions, process-based and mechanised operations, AI-driven services and data-driven management reporting.

In the letter to shareholders in Onewo’s 2023 annual report, Zhu Baoquan discussed the company’s share price performance: share buybacks had limited effect; the proposal of an “interim dividend with a scrip option” was negatively interpreted by the market as the company lacking cash; because its trading turnover in the fourth quarter was insufficient, it was not included in that quarter’s Hang Seng Index review, and the share price continued to fall; the company later issued an open letter explaining the results of its communication with Hang Seng Indexes Company Limited. He suggested that the years 2023 to 2025 would be a watershed for the industry, with contract renewal rates in the property management industry above 85%, and that the company needed to complete the leap from the tail end of real estate development to consumption based on real estate ownership, and to deal with the problems arising from the shift in revenue structure and the growth in scale. The letter disclosed that the company achieved a cash surplus coverage ratio of 1.3 times; the gross margin of upgraded Butterfly City units rose by 4.5 percentage points; the share of revenue from continuing connected transactions with Vanke fell to 13.5%; the administrative expense ratio fell by 0.9 percentage points; and revenue from AIoT and BPaaS solutions rose 16.9% year on year, accounting for 8.4% of the company’s total revenue. He also mentioned that in 2023 the company carried out R&D pilots of the “Lingshi” edge computing server and the “Feige” intelligent work order system within Butterfly City units, and in commercial property tried jointly building energy management service pilots with clients; the total transaction value of its second-hand home sales business rose 24.5% year on year, contracted value of the decoration business within Butterfly City units rose 68.0% year on year, the volume of repair and decoration business rose 90.8% year on year, and the total value of asset-related value-added services exceeded 32.5 billion yuan, with more than 5.66 million service instances; in the same year 39,821 company employees completed CPR rescue training, successfully saving 12 lives, and together with a foundation and homeowners the company deployed 2,870 AED devices.

In the letter to shareholders in Onewo’s 2024 annual report, Zhu Baoquan discussed the impact of AI on the property management industry. He mentioned that the company spent most of a year experimenting with locally deployed large models of several kinds without producing a satisfactory industry large model, and so switched to a RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) approach, writing professional knowledge into a vector database and then calling different large models as needed; the “Smart Property Butler”, “Smart IT Butler” and “Smart HR Butler” built in this way had already been put into practical use. He also argued in the letter that AI would bring obvious substitution of human labour, but that it was necessary to be alert to the possibility that clients could equally use AI to complete tasks originally outsourced, turning the cooperative relationship into competition in the short term; robots have positive significance for efficiency and do not change the contracting party; intelligent agents might be the biggest threat to property management companies, since a property manager’s duties, such as following up daily tasks, supervising ad hoc tasks, dispatching and quality-checking work orders, and preventive analysis, are all foreseeable capabilities of intelligent agents. He said the company would soon develop three types of positions: H-type (human), R-type (robot) and A-type (agent); on the one hand companies must build knowledge bases to help R-type and A-type staff take up their posts, and on the other they must quickly distinguish which work must be done by H-type positions, provide redeployment training in advance, and offer redeployment opportunities once R-type and A-type staff take up their posts, so as to avoid unemployment. Zhu Baoquan said in the letter that “asset management capability, AI application capability, and green and low-carbon capability” would be the key capability-building directions for Onewo, and mentioned the boost brought by state capital’s deep support for the parent company.

On 27 January 2025, Vanke’s board approved a number of resolutions and the senior management team was replaced ahead of schedule: Shenzhen Metro chairman Xin Jie succeeded Yu Liang as chairman of Vanke’s board, president Zhu Jiusheng resigned from all positions in the company, and Zhu Xu resigned as board secretary and from other posts. After the Spring Festival holiday, Vanke’s management continued to be adjusted and reinforced, with personnel from Shenzhen state-owned backgrounds entering core headquarters departments and major regional companies. After the adjustment, Zhu Baoquan, Zhang Hai and Sun Jia were each responsible only for the specific work of Onewo, Vanke’s development and operations business group and the commercial business unit respectively, while the new state-appointed executives took control of these important Vanke businesses. Among them, Li Gang was responsible for the operational management of the operating services business, overseeing multiple diversified business units including the property company and the commercial business unit.

In the letter to shareholders in Onewo’s 2025 annual report, signed as chairman, Zhu Baoquan discussed the impact of the adjustment in the development industry on the company’s financial statements: compared with the first half of 2025, impairment provisions of 740 million yuan were made on related receivables in the second half, making the annual net profit figure look poor. He identified “unexpectedly high vacant units” as a problem urgently needing to be solved after the guaranteed delivery of homes: delivered communities may have more than 30% of units unsold, property companies passively accept vacant-unit property fees payable by developers, these receivables often become bad debts, and assets received in lieu of debt payment face impairment; the vacancy rate of homes already bought by owners is also not to be underestimated, with vacant-unit owners free-riding and the burden on paying owners increasing. He pointed out that non-developer property projects had entered red-ocean competition, with more than 10 companies often bidding for each target, and industry gross margins declining; in 2025 Cushwake’s bid success rate was 51.8% and Vanke Service’s was 70%; in 2026 Cushwake would continue to raise its competitiveness with “smart and low-carbon” as its technology base, while Vanke Service would keep its lead with “flexible pricing” and “digital service reports”. The letter disclosed that the company consumed 72.5 billion tokens during the year, corresponding to a reduction of nearly 200 million yuan in absolute administrative expenses; Onewo used its own “Lingshi” edge servers to build a robotics ecosystem with several manufacturers. He also mentioned that in 2025 the company received two honours, Top Employer (China) and S&P Global ESG Industry Mover; in the same year Vanke Service for the first time exited a project developed by a related company, in Tianjin, breaking a historical internal red line.

On 14 August 2026, Zhu Baoquan attended Onewo’s 2026 interim results briefing. According to the results announcement, Onewo achieved revenue of 19.112 billion yuan in the first half, up 5.4% year on year; gross profit was 2.419 billion yuan, down 3.0% year on year, with a gross margin of 12.7%; excluding the impact of developer-related businesses, core net profit was about 1.10 billion yuan, up 7.3% year on year. Zhu Baoquan acknowledged at the briefing that “exit” had become a buzzword in the residential property market in the first half, with peers including Vanke Property all withdrawing from projects; he divided the exited projects into three types: developer vacancies, projects among acquired assets that did not fit the urban strategic layout, and projects where owners’ committees had not honoured their commitments. He considered exits a two-way choice that both improved the company’s cash flow and operating quality and gave owners a chance to choose again. According to the briefing, Vanke Property exited a total of 139 residential property service projects in the first half, corresponding to annualised saturated revenue of 740 million yuan, which narrowed pre-tax losses by 32.33 million yuan; it signed 207 new residential projects with saturated revenue of 840 million yuan, and as of the end of June it managed 4,680 residential projects with annualised saturated revenue of 29.557 billion yuan, up 5.06% year on year. Zhu Baoquan pointed out that the property and facility management business had entered a stage of red-ocean competition in 2025–2026, with more participants, rising office vacancy rates and declining corporate administrative budgets, but Onewo Space-Tech and Dantian Property had first-mover advantages, with newly signed contracts in the first half carrying saturated revenue of 1.99 billion yuan, including 20 new university projects, 15 hospital projects and 320 corporate projects. He also said that Onewo’s Lingshi had entered the stage of large-scale contracting, with 1,339 units signed, of which 472 had been delivered and deployed; Lingshi would enter its ramp-up period in the company’s 2028–2030 business plan, with 2027 being a period of heavy investment. By the end of the first half, Onewo’s butterfly city base had expanded to 708, comprising 284 standard butterfly cities, 251 main-focus butterfly cities and 173 target butterfly cities; the AI assistant “Keke” serving owners covered 4,140 projects and 12,992 grids, had served more than 470,000 customers in total, and had responded to more than 107,000 owner requests; in the first half, AI-driven efficiency gains reduced administrative expenses by 43.04 million yuan year on year, a decrease of 4.9%.