Companies like Inner Mongolia BaoTou Steel are down more than 30% over the last three months, with production still on hold because of the new restrictions.
But he borrowed heavily from loan sharks, and started to run into repayment difficulties this year, according to a friend of Mr. Wei's and people in Baotou's real-estate industry.
The chairman of what domestic real-estate agents said was the biggest developer in the northern Chinese city of Baotou, he struck it rich in 1996 by helping rebuild the city following an earthquake.
Chen Ningning built an early fortune in the steel business but now most of her fortune lies in publicly traded Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Group, where she is an investor (not an executive).