Shum and his co-author, journalist John Pomfret, lean into the intrigue of Shum’s life among Beijing’s power brokers. He played high-stakes card games on a private jet. A naval officer proffered battleships to smuggle beer. The son-in-law of a party boss once told him that jail time had become almost a right of passage for business leaders, like going to the military academy.
Shum began to notice a pattern of ambitious executives going missing, starting with Li Peiying, the Beijing airport chief who also headed Shum’s joint venture airport project. Li, who made arrangements for China’s party heavyweights when they landed in Beijing, was found guilty of corruption and executed.
A former member of the CPPCC, China’s political advisory body, Shum said his views on China began to sour in 2008 when the party began to reestablish control over the economy, the media, the Internet and the educational system. Party committees were forced on private businesses, including his.
He says the system ultimately serves interests of China’s “princelings,” descendants of the original Communist revolutionaries. That group includes Xi, whose father was a senior party official under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Harsh punishment, he says, is reserved for “commoners” without a revolutionary pedigree like Duan.
Now living in England with his 12-year-old son, Shum fears his ex-wife’s phone call is a sign that he and his family could still be vulnerable to retribution. He and Duan were willing players in the “roulette-like political environment of the New China,” he writes, not innocent bystanders.
Still, his tale is a rare alternative to China’s tightly-controlled, state-sponsored narratives. In his book, Shum poses an urgent question: “What type of system allows for extralegal kidnappings of the type that befell Whitney Duan?”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.