Wanda’s $6.5 billion sale of 13 theme parks to Sunac includes vast real estate projects in various stages of development. The properties, when completed, will comprise 635 million square feet of floor space. By comparison, all of Manhattan has 500 million square feet of office space.

The conglomerate also off-loaded 77 hotels to R & F Properties at fire sale prices. At $3 billion, the deal represents a 40 percent discount to the net asset value at which Wanda was carrying the hotels on its books.

Wanda is now a much slimmed down version of itself. The conglomerate is keeping a large ski resort and 10 hotels in northeastern China on the border with North Korea, as well as four other hotels, including a Sofitel next to its Beijing headquarters and the Wanda Reign here in Wuhan. Wanda owns about 180 shopping malls scattered across China and manages 30 more. Wanda also retains AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest operator of movie theaters, and a struggling 300-employee Hollywood studio.

By dumping much of its real estate, Wanda is pursuing what the founder describes as an “asset-light” strategy, after the government’s recent policy discouraging overseas investments and heavy borrowing. Rather than owning properties that require big loans, it will try to make money by managing hotels, theme parks and shopping malls.

As part of the deal with Sunac, Wanda will get almost $100 million annually for the next 20 years to manage all 13 projects. Its main business will be building shopping malls for other investors and managing them, in exchange for about 30 percent of each location’s revenues.

That represents a hope that many Chinese will keep shopping at malls, when the popularity of e-commerce is soaring instead. But Mr. Wang, once one of the wealthiest men in Asia, dismissed that worry.

“E-commerce will never substitute for real shops,” he said in a written reply to questions. “The real economy has come into an era in which it needs to be transformed and upgraded.”