Reading tea leaves

"[Wang] can't do it anonymously like [Disney] did with the land in Florida," he added, "but I see what he's doing and it appears what he and what Wanda are doing is buying a lot of assets as they become available - that's the opportunistic part - and in some cases overpaying, but with the idea that the totality will be worth far more than the individual pieces added together."

"He's made many public statements about Disney, so we don't have to read too many tea leaves," he said.

Wanda opened its second theme park late September in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, spending $3.6 billion. The 365-acre attraction has an outdoor theme park, indoor water park, luxury hotels, cinema attractions, and a shopping mall, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Wang said at the opening ceremony that it would invest another $1.5 billion to build indoor entertainment facilities at the park in the next few years.

Wanda's ambition to develop into an entertainment empire with a strong sports component grew bigger recently when Wang announced on Sept 30 deals with major sports entities, with a clock running on the year for some reason.

"As long as time permits, Wanda will announce another one or two partnership agreements with major international sports federation before the year ends," he said. "We have been realizing our ambition."

As for his buying spree in Hollywood, and what effect it might have on national security concerns on Capitol Hill, time will tell. But Christopher Spicer offers some perspective.

"There's a long history in LA - and Hollywood specifically - of foreigners coming in and making investments and people here view it as a positive," he told China Daily.

"The studios always want a pipeline to co-finance their movies, to the extent that Wanda will co-finance movies," he added. "But people will always take the money, whether it comes from China, Russia, or Germany, for the most part. We'll take the check, there's no problem there."