Zhang Jindong — watch collection

About Zhang Jindong’s watch collection

Zhang Jindong is one of China's most prominent entrepreneurs, best known as the founder and longtime chairman of Suning Holdings Group, the retail and e-commerce conglomerate he built from a single electronics store in Nanjing in 1990 into one of the country's largest retail empires. Suning.com grew to encompass tens of thousands of stores, a major e-commerce platform, and interests spanning logistics, finance, and sports. In 2016, Zhang led a consortium that acquired a controlling stake in FC Internazionale Milano, making him a significant figure in European football ownership and giving him a profile that extends well beyond Chinese business circles.

The Zhang Jindong watch collection, at least as documented through public sightings, leans toward the technically serious end of haute horlogerie. Zhang has been spotted wearing an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon Extra-Thin in stainless steel — reference 26510ST — a piece that represents one of the more demanding executions within the Royal Oak lineage. The watch is driven by Calibre 2924, a manually wound flying tourbillon movement with a movement height of just 4.46mm, contributing to a total case thickness of 8.8mm. For a watch housing a tourbillon complication, that figure is genuinely difficult to achieve and reflects considerable movement engineering from the Le Brassus manufacture.

The choice of a steel Royal Oak Tourbillon Extra-Thin over a more ostentatious gem-set or grand complication piece is telling. It suggests an appreciation for movement craft rather than surface display — the kind of preference that tends to come from someone who has done the research. Within the Royal Oak family, the Extra-Thin tourbillon occupies a specific position: understated in appearance relative to its mechanical difficulty, and more scarce in steel than in precious metal configurations.