684: Desmond Shum | Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in China

Desmond Shum is the former husband of arrested Chinese billionaire "Whitney" Duan Weihong and the author of Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China.

What We Discuss with Desmond Shum:

• Why Desmond's intellectual schoolteacher parents were treated as undesirables by the CCP • , and how this led to his family's self-exile to then-British Hong Kong when he was 10.

• What the CCP does to keep evidence of events like the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre out of the public eye • -- and what Desmond's impression of this particular event was like.

• How the economic necessity of corruption to make business sustainable under the watchful eye of the CCP is used as a bargaining chip • to keep the operators of these businesses in line.

• The path that led Desmond and his wife Whitney to the inner circle of the CCP and allowed them to make billions • with the government's blessing -- and the amount of work that went into maintaining the network that allowed this to continue.

• The circumstances of Whitney's disappearance • , and the eerie phone call he received from her four years later urging him not to publish his tell-all book.

• And much more...

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/684

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