Colored raw materials perspective: Lessons from Guoshou Anbao's shattered filter

Blue Whale News, June 29 (Reporter Qi Hezhong) The general manager of insurance-affiliated fund company Guoshou Anbao has been replaced.

On June 23, the company announced that general manager E Hua resigned due to work arrangements, and Liu Zhongjiang took over as general manager. Liu previously served as general manager of the direct investment department and general manager of the fixed income investment department at the major shareholder China Life Asset Management.

E Hua, who stepped down as general manager, had held the position since January 2023, a tenure of just over three years and five months. Before becoming general manager of Guoshou Anbao, he was the general manager of China Life's equity investment department.

On the company’s homepage, the slogan reads: “Adhering to the original intention for 12 years, repaying every trust.” However, the company’s actual operating performance in the past three-plus years has been less than satisfactory. As of the end of the first quarter this year, the company’s non-money fund scale was 181.8 billion yuan, ranking 30th in the industry. However, the fund types are mainly bond funds, with equity funds accounting for a very small portion. Among them, stock-type funds are about 10 billion yuan, and hybrid funds about 5.6 billion yuan.

As the former general manager of China Life’s equity investment department, E Hua saw the equity fund scale generally decline rather than increase during his tenure of over three years and five months. Among them, hybrid fund scale dropped by as much as 50%.

During E Hua’s tenure, not only were the performance and scale of Guoshou Anbao’s equity funds poor, but the company’s internal control also revealed significant vulnerabilities.

In August 2025, according to an administrative penalty document from the Tianjin Securities Regulatory Bureau, fund manager Li Dan was penalized for “rat trading.”

Earlier, in December 2023, according to a penalty document from the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau, the general manager of the company’s segregated account investment department, Hu Wenbiao, was penalized for illegal stock trading and market manipulation.

Despite these issues, it did not prevent E Hua from returning to the major shareholder to receive further promotion. It is understood that in the daily work of Guoshou Anbao, excessive meetings and paperwork are quite serious. In the company’s assessment system, the requirement to make money for fund holders is not given its proper place, which deviates significantly from the CSRC’s requirements for high-quality development.

Over the past three-plus years, the major shareholder of Guoshou Anbao has sent many people to the company, occupying important positions, while the hard and tedious work is still mainly done by market hires. This has led to a significant reduction in the company’s market orientation, resulting in severely insufficient investment research and sales capabilities.

Before 2023, Guoshou Anbao was not like this; the company had a relatively high degree of marketization. The company’s first general manager, Zuo Jiqing, was relatively bold in adhering to principles and maintaining corporate governance.

Guoshou Anbao was established in October 2013, founded and built by Zuo Jiqing, former general manager of China Life Asset Management’s fixed income department, and Shen Mengyu, former deputy general manager (presiding) of the risk management and compliance department.

After the company was established, it took 10 years to grow from scratch into a mid-sized fund company. By the end of 2022, the company’s non-money fund scale was 128.5 billion yuan, ranking 31st in the industry. Among them, stock-type funds were about 7.6 billion yuan, and hybrid funds about 12.8 billion yuan.

At that time, the company had high requirements for professionalism, and the management team mainly came from market-based recruitment with strong competitiveness.

However, after the company expanded its asset scale, some people within the major shareholder began to covet certain important positions in the company, demanding appointments by appointment. Zuo Jiqing was unwilling to cooperate with these unreasonable demands and was under tremendous pressure as a result.

In January 2023, the company’s general manager Zuo Jiqing, inspector general Shen Mengyu, and fixed income investment director Dong Ruiqian resigned due to “personal reasons.” After Changning State-owned Capital took over Chunhou Fund, Zuo Jiqing and Shen Mengyu became general manager and deputy general manager of Chunhou Fund in January 2026.

Over the past three-plus years, the filter of Guoshou Anbao has shattered. E Hua and others fulfilled their butterfly dreams, while the first-generation founders like Zuo Jiqing and Shen Mengyu experienced a phoenix-like transformation.

In the story of Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he became a butterfly, feeling carefree! After waking, he found himself clearly Zhuang Zhou again. What made Zhuang Zhou a great sage was that he clearly knew he was Zhuang Zhou after waking; the wings in his dream were borrowed from the butterfly.

In real life, some people cannot distinguish between dream and reality. Some state-owned enterprise cadres have worked in enterprises for years but still cannot transform into competent business operators, living long in a butterfly dream, unwilling to wake up.

We sincerely hope that Guoshou Anbao can earnestly study and understand the connotation and essence of “development is the hard truth,” focus on company operations, speak with operational performance, and avoid falling into the quagmire of formalism, being lazy despite talking a lot. The company should quickly return to the market-oriented and international development track, eliminate formalism, and not regress by deceiving superiors and subordinates, wasting valuable development opportunities. The management should truly focus on work, ensuring the preservation and appreciation of state-owned capital invested by the major shareholder and helping fund holders achieve good returns.