He Was China's "Self-Made" Richest Man. Then Evergrande Collapsed

Xu Jiayin was once China's richest man, with a taste for luxury labels and yachts.

From rural poverty to real-estate billions, the fortunes of Xu Jiayin mirrored China's runaway economic growth for much of the past two decades -- but now he is battling to save his Evergrande conglomerate from a quagmire of debt.

The 63-year-old was once China's richest man, with a taste for luxury labels and yachts, and a nose for praising the Communist Party that steered the economy to a home-ownership boom.

Xu's wealth was estimated at $43 billion four years ago, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

But that is now down to $8 billion as Evergrande sags under hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and fears mount of a collapse that could ricochet across the global economy.