Zhang Xin

Zhang Xin (, also known as Xin "Shynn" Zhang, born 1965) is an American businesswoman best known for co-founding the real estate developer SOHO China with her husband Pan Shiyi.

Born in Beijing, Zhang moved with her family to Hong Kong at the age of 14. She pursued higher education in the United Kingdom and began her career in finance in Hong Kong and New York. From 1995 to 2022, she and her husband built SOHO China into a major office developer during China’s property boom, before stepping down from the company ahead of the sector’s downturn. Since the 2010s, they have shifted their assets and business activities to the United States.

Early life and education In the 1950s, Zhang Xin's parents, second-generation Burmese Chinese, left Burma and immigrated to China. There, they worked as translators at the Foreign Languages Press. They separated during the Cultural Revolution.

Born in Beijing in 1965, Zhang remained with her mother after the separation of her parents, To support herself in the UK, she "worked in a traditional British fish and chip shop run by a Chinese couple," and took on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model, where she wrote her master's thesis on privatization in China.

Career

Early career Upon graduation, Zhang was hired by Barings PLC (later Barings Bank), which had scouted Cambridge for students with knowledge of privatization in China, and which hired Zhang on the strength of her master's thesis on the topic. By 2008, the couple was described by The Times as "China's most visible and flamboyant property tycoons."

In 2014, Zhang and her husband launched a $100 million charitable initiative, the SOHO China Scholarships, "to fund disadvantaged Chinese students at top institutions across the globe," SOHO China began a transition from a business model of building and selling properties to one of buying and leasing them, with Zhang participating in the February 2015 launch of the SOHO 3Q shared office space sector, leasing shared space to companies in cities in China.

Zhang established the New York City-based Closer Properties in 2008 . She began unwinding her operations in China in the mid-2010s, citing high capital costs and low rental yields that had reduced investment returns in the country's real estate sector to "very low" levels. Between 2014 and 2021, SOHO China sold more than RMB30 billion (US$4.2 billion) in assets, ranging from office buildings to parking facilities, before Beijing blocked Zhang's proposed sale of the entire company to Blackstone. During the same period, Zhang invested in nearly a dozen trophy properties in New York and Boston, including acquiring a $600 million stake in New York City's Park Avenue Plaza, with total investments exceeding US$5 billion.

In 2015, Zhang and her husband set up the New York–based family office Seven Valleys (now Closer Group). Zhang relocated to the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic and resigned from SOHO China in September 2022. In 2021, Xin founded Closer Media, a film production and financing company focusing on the US film industry. She served as a trustee to the China Institute in America from 2005 to 2010, and was recognized by the China Institute with a Blue Cloud Award in 2010. In 2014, Zhang was listed as the 62nd most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. and is "regularly named one of the top businesswomen in the world." Zhang has been named a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art , she is trustee of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Asia Business Council. In 2026 she was invited to become a member of the Executives Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Zhang made a cameo appearance, as a representative of a Chinese investor, in the 2010 film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Personal life Zhang and Pan have two sons.