Red Roulette

Desmond Shum’s, “Red Roulette: An Insider Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China. Shum’s book is an insider account of party corruption and of how capitalists like him managed to use the system to amass vast sums of money through the persistent use of what the Chinese call “personal touch and relations” (guanxi). Whitney Duan, purportedly China’s richest woman, disappeared on September 5, 2017. She was last seen in her office at the heart of a multi-billion dollar complex she had helped build in Beijing’s financial district on the Liangmahe River, consisting of a Bulgari Hotel, a modern art museum, and offices, all linked by architecturally-designed gardens and meant to create, in the words of its developers, a new model of culture and commerce. Daniel Shum, her ex-husband now living in Britain, wrote the book after not hearing from her for several years to explain to their son what life was like in China’s overheated “Gilded Age” in the early 2000s of huge economic gains and corruption, and what may have happened to Whitney.

Desmond Shum was born in Shanghai, raised in Hong Kong, and educated in Wisconsin. He collaborated with his wife Duan Weihong (Whitney) in business in the 1990s and early 2000s. Their major break came with the rise of “Auntie Zhang” or Zhang Beili, the spouse of then-Premier Wen Jiabao. The book revolves around how Shum and Duan exploited this relationship to amass wealth. It also highlights how the couple used Auntie Zhang’s network and interacted with multiple political characters to push their business agenda. The list included Sun Zhengcai, a rising party official thought to be Xi’s successor and Ling Jihua, principal political advisor to GS Hu Jintao and the current PRC President Xi Jinping.

Auntie Zhang’s connections helped the couple develop the largest air cargo logistics facility in the PRC at the Beijing Airport Cargo Terminal. They also built the luxurious Bulgari Hotel in the heart of the Embassy District in Beijing. These achievements, Shum claims, were made possible by a culture of wining, dining, and bribing, which capitalists in China employ to obtain party approvals. Troubles began to surface when The New York Times questioned Aunty Zhang’s wealth in 2012. It was the same year that Xi rose to power.

Xi’s rise and his “anti-corruption” campaign to limit his political opponents marked the beginning of the downfall of Auntie Zhang, Sun, and Li, among others. Shum and Duan crashed with them. Shum had to leave the country and Duan disappeared in 2017. She was arrested by the Chinese authorities in 2017 and remains in custody without being charged. Shum states that the CCP swats down entrepreneurs who know too much, like Duan, or talk too much like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.

Shum cannot quite provide concrete details of who kidnapped Whitney or why. Perhaps she had embarrassed a Party sensitive to allegations its members had enriched themselves ahead of the goal of “common prosperity”. Maybe she was part of a corruption investigation among the political elite. Shum believes Whitney was held by the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. But the final reveal in the story falls outside the book and came as Red Roulette was on the printing press. Whitney reappeared. After four years, she called Shum and their young son. She wouldn’t say what had happened. Shum told reporters he believes she was calling under duress. He says she told him not to attack the Party or the motherland. Whitney asked him not to go ahead, saying it might anger the Chinese government and security services. Nevertheless, he published. The dedication of the book is to Whitney but it is accompanied by a thousand-year-old Chinese poem. It reads, “Better to speak out and die than keep silent and live”.

Red Roulette exposes the dark side of the governance of the CCP, which is not often visible due to the party’s strict control of the media. Unlike the popular belief that decision-making in China is restricted to a limited few, the book shows how it can be manipulated informally at all levels: central, provincial, municipal, prefectural, county, township, and village. Although the stories in the book are not verifiable, and some have reportedly been falsified, it still provides the reader with insights into the system.1

1 There are numerous accounts on the internet that question highlight falsification by Shum, such as this https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4246505484 This is a racy one-time read if you are interested in the inner workings of CCP and, are game for a non-verifiable account of the high life of a business mogul manipulating the Chinese political system for financial gains.