The Other Side of Ren Zeping: An Economist, Half a Volume of "Strange Anecdotes"

"Top-tier" economist Ren Zeping has fallen into a new public opinion storm recently. His official WeChat public account has been restricted from new follows, and he has also lost his verified yellow V badge as an economist.

Looking back at Ren Zeping's career, it is simply a legendary history full of anecdotes. He once shouted "5000 points is not a dream", and he was the Ren Zeping who took an annual salary of 15 million RMB. Since he stepped into the content creator industry, he has been warned by group administrators for posting advertisements, torn apart by other big influencers when talking about the stock market, and the news that a VIP group member lost over ten million RMB has gone viral across the entire internet. He has been constantly trending on hot search lists, never stopping for a moment.

Instead of viewing Ren Zeping from the economic field, examining him from the perspective of his struggle history can reveal more of his other sides.

What on earth happened to Ren Zeping?

This weekend, people found that Ren Zeping's WeChat public account was restricted from new follows due to violations. Upon closer inspection, his economist verification badge has also disappeared.

In the past, Ren Zeping had the yellow V verification as an economist on all major platforms:

Now, all these verifications are gone. Ren Zeping's Douyin account only shows that the operating entity is "Beijing Dushu Youyi Information Technology Co., Ltd.". In fact, according to regulatory provisions, people who do not work at securities companies, investment advisory firms or fund companies do not have the practice qualification number for investment advisory or fund business, and are not allowed to comment on financial markets and stock trends. As Ren Zeping holds the title of "economist", he should review his words and deeds under the strict new regulatory environment.

The current status of the public account "Zeping Macro" is that it will not be displayed in search results. If you open it from the author page of historical articles, it is also restricted from new follows, but old users can still view the user information on the homepage, and the verified entity is "Haize Zaidu Information Technology (Tianjin) Co., Ltd.".

His public account was last updated last Friday (October 24), with article titles including "The Market Hits Bottom, Rebound Market Unfolds", "Elon Musk's Seven Predictions: Subvert Your Cognition", "China Population Situation Report 2026" and "Ren Zeping's Annual Prediction Invitation: Top Ten Trends in 2027". These views coincided with the strong rally of A-shares last Friday.

This is not the first time he has taken an optimistic stance. During the sharp drop of tech stocks in July and August, Ren Zeping firmly held a bullish view, and was questioned by a group member in a WeChat group, who suggested that he should not comment on the stock market for the next two months.

It was also during that period that screenshots showing a "Zeping Macro VIP Group" member losing over ten million RMB went viral online. At that time, Ren Zeping responded that after verification, the member had only joined the group for one or two weeks. The member also admitted that Ren Zeping's team never recommended specific stocks, and he lost a lot of money on his own allocated positions because he used leverage.

Later, Ren Zeping's team announced that the VIP group had been dissolved. The last time Ren Zeping was muted was two years ago.

During the National Day holiday in 2024, Ren Zeping had a dispute with Dan Bin. After September 24, the market surged continuously for a week, and everyone was shouting that a bull market was coming. Then on October 2, Dan Bin posted a status: "With such a sharp surge, there will definitely be a sharp plunge. If people get trapped again this time, all available resources have been mobilized, and it will be hopeless to get out of the trap...", "Enjoy the thrill to the fullest, there will be no second chance..."

Ren Zeping posted a Weibo post expressing his bullish view at that time, but the post was soon removed from public view.

As a result, on the first trading day after that National Day holiday, the market opened high and moved low, and kept falling in the following days. So Dan Bin posted an article saying "I warned everyone as early as October 2... But I, who was warning of risks, was laughed at!", "Should the 'experts' and 'scholars' who called for a big bull market and urged investors to pour money into the market, as well as some self-media creators, come out and apologize? Of course, I know the vast majority of these people will still be stubborn, some of them will delete their previous posts as if nothing happened... The most miserable ones are probably the 'investment novices' who bought stocks...".

Ren Zeping neither claimed responsibility nor apologized, stating that Dan Bin was bearish on the market and was deliberately leading public opinion astray. The dispute between the two on social media was soon watched by a large number of netizens. Although both of them were muted by Weibo, and their public accounts were also restricted from new follows at the same time, they were not unblocked until a very long time later.

The Road to Becoming a Top-tier Chief: Making Stunning Remarks Nonstop?

Ren Zeping becoming a top-tier chief economist is certainly related to his frequent stunning remarks.

In 2007, Ren Zeping joined the macro research team of Guosen Securities. Two years later, he joined the Development Research Center of the State Council. In the quantitative performance assessment rankings of the Development Research Center in 2011 and 2012, Ren Zeping ranked 4th and 6th respectively.

Later, Ren Zeping chose a path that no one expected: he decided to leave the public sector in 2014, joined the research institute of Guotai Junan Securities, and served as Managing Director and Chief Macro Analyst.

Since then, Ren Zeping's stunning remark mode has been activated. In the same year he took office, he published a "declaration of war against the bear market" titled "On the Final Battle Against the Bear Market".

There was a viewpoint in the article: "Breaking the old and establishing the new, reducing the risk-free interest rate and raising risk appetite will open up a magnificent big bull market, and 5000 points is not a dream." which shocked the whole market.

When he published this article, the market index was only at around 2300, and no one believed his viewpoint would come true. Unexpectedly, the index really broke through 5000 points a year later, which became a great miracle in A-share market. In that year, Ren Zeping won the first place of New Fortune's Best Macro Analyst. Later, some market researchers carefully studied and pointed out that the rise of domestic tech enterprises, the strong momentum of Chinese enterprises going global, and the positive economic development trend made such result not surprising.

For this reason, Huang Yanming, the director of Guotai Junan's research institute, specially wrote a ten-thousand-word long article praising Ren Zeping's prediction for coming true.

This time, Ren Zeping got carried away.

At that time, Guotai Junan had two chief analysts: Ren Zeping was the Chief Macro Analyst, and there was another chief economist named Lin Caiyi, both of whom covered macroeconomic research.

During the "Most Influential Economist Selection" event, members of Lin Caiyi's team canvassed votes for both Lin Caiyi and Ren Zeping, which caused dissatisfaction from Ren Zeping. He said "Please do not put Ren Zeping's team and Lin Caiyi's team on an equal footing in the future."

Ren Zeping also asked Lin Caiyi: "Have you ever been recognized by institutional investors? Have you ever generated commission income for the company?" Lin Caiyi did not refute him directly or quarrel with him, but went to the director Huang Yanming, demanding that the company's compliance department publicly release the handling decision on Ren Zeping.

Due to the conflict with his colleague, coupled with the occurrence of the "thousand-stock limit down" market, Ren Zeping kept a low profile for a while. In 2016, he suddenly made remarks again: "Go all in", "The index has an upside potential of about 20%". But there was no miracle this time. The market index soon turned to fall, and Ren Zeping immediately cleared all his Weibo posts and hid for a period of time.

Some investors believe that Ren Zeping's stress resistance is "not that good". Li Daxiao insists on publishing new viewpoints every day, and no matter what the prediction results are, it does not affect his high activity.

Not long after, Ren Zeping left Guotai Junan and joined Founder Securities, serving concurrently as chief economist and director of the research institute. This time, he only stayed at Founder for one year before he found a better job.

The Myth of 15 Million RMB Annual Salary

In 2017, Evergrande was busy snatching "land king" titles across the country, and Mr. Xu became the new richest man, actively recruiting top talents. He suddenly took a fancy to Ren Zeping who had outstanding performance in the market.

Mr. Xu recruited Ren Zeping and offered him an annual salary of 15 million RMB, which is ten times the million-level annual salary in securities firms. After joining Evergrande, Ren Zeping's remarks attracted even more attention from the industry.

"The housing prices in first-tier and second-tier cities in China will double in the next 10 years, and the housing prices in third-tier and fourth-tier cities will triple"

"From 2017 to 2030, 19.3 to 22.6 billion square meters of new urban housing will be needed, that is, 1.48 to 1.74 billion square meters of new housing per year on average"

"In the long run, housing prices are determined by population; in the medium run, by land supply; in the short run, by financial policies"

In 2017, Mr. Wang of Wanda next door made a "bold decision to cut losses", sold a large number of projects at a discount to Sunac and Greenland, and successfully escaped the top of the property market.

In 2018, Ren Zeping published a book titled "New Cycle", pointing out that China's economy would enter a new round of cycle after 2018, and everything would develop in a positive direction.

His viewpoints such as "5000 points is not a dream", "first-tier city housing prices will double", "the economy will show an L-shaped trend" etc. were all printed on the cover of the book.

Everyone has already seen the result of these predictions, so I will not elaborate on it.

In 2019, Liu Shengjun began to criticize Ren Zeping, and published a series of articles:

"6%: How Embarrassing Ren Zeping's 'New Cycle Theory' Is?"

"Ren Zeping Is Not That Great, He Is Just Good at Bragging"

Ren Zeping also published articles to fight back, saying that his research is different from that of the academic school: his viewpoints are clear, down-to-earth, practical, and never ambiguous.

The underlying meaning is obvious: it is normal for predictions to be right or wrong, and having clear viewpoints is better than those ambiguous viewpoints circulating in the market.

While the two were arguing, the "three red lines" policy was introduced in 2020, and the real estate industry cooled down. In 2021, Ren Zeping, who had worked in the real estate industry for several years, suddenly announced his resignation, he wrote a thank-you note when leaving: I thank Mr. Xu for his trust and support. Mr. Xu has a great vision and great sentiment.

What was unexpected by the market was that one month after he left Evergrande, he served as the chief macro economist of Soochow Securities, and then publicly expressed the viewpoint that real estate is the hardest bubble in China.

Shortly afterwards, Evergrande got into trouble, and everyone realized that Ren Zeping's prediction ability was indeed higher than the whole industry.

Regarding this matter, Liu Shengjun wrote an article titled "Three Years Ago, Xu Jiayin Accidentally Took a Medicine Called 'Ren Zeping'".

He said that Ren Zeping was the kind of person who made exaggerated hype under the guise of research reports: "Xu was too close to the situation to see clearly, and Ren Zeping's so-called research just catered to his preferences." Liu Shengjun said, "Ren Zeping likes to use exaggerated language to incite and appeal to people, engage in marketing-style hype, and also has a bit of gambler's mentality."

But this matter can no longer be verified.

At this time, some people found that Ren Zeping's joining Soochow Securities might even be fake. After checking on the website of the Securities Association of China, Ren Zeping's practice registration status still shows "resigned and cancelled" at Founder Securities back in 2016: