Share｜Red Roulette (Red Roulette) Lazy Bag

"Red Roulette," out September 2021, is a memoir.

Shen Dong was born in Shanghai, grew up in Hong Kong, and completed university education in the United States. He is a former executive of a private equity fund and is currently living in the UK... Shen Dong's ex-wife Duan Weihong has close ties with Wen Jiabao and Sun Zhengcai, the former Politburo member and Secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee who has been deposed. It was rumored that he served as a white glove for the powerful family of the Communist Party of China until Duan Weihong suddenly disappeared four years ago. (RFA)

He was also interviewed by the BBC

Since there is no Chinese version of this book yet, I would like to share the "wonderful review" ( source ) published by Reddit u/YingAu here.

(The following content includes the main text and 9 paragraphs "continue to update", the original author and other netizens replied, you can click the above source to view)

Story hero (Last name, first name)

Shen Dong , the author himself, went into business with his wife and ran away first

Duan Weihong (Whitney) author's wife, failed to run, was arrested

Auntie Zhang , wife of Wen Jiabao

1.
To put it simply, this is a story of government-business collusion narrated in the third person. It is estimated that if you have not heard a hundred of such stories, you have heard eighty of them. It's just that the funds mobilized this time are tens of billions to hundreds of billions, and the officials involved are the state-level and deputy state-level officials.

2.
Shen Dong can be regarded as a financial executive, but obviously, his ability and courage are not as good as his dear wife Whitney. To a large extent, 80% of his success (whether in the business world, as a private equity, insurance executive, or in politics, as a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) is due to his wife holding Wen Jiabao's wife Aunt Zhang's line. Of course, this did make them a lot of money.

3.
Wen Jiabao's wife is a woman with a kind smile on her face - she will be nostalgic for the feeling of being surrounded by people - and like some other wives of senior CCP officials who are not willing to be completely silent, they also need to be like Whitney ( The author's wife) is so smart, capable, loyal, always able to find a topic, a butterfly, socially awesome, can't do it without her in the dinner, and help them with their financial affairs with empathetic white gloves. ([Comments] This kind of women is indeed more common. They are also responsible for doing some logistical work for their husbands—creating a "relationship database" and opening the door to see who can come in to help them and who can't— And instructions on how to allocate resources. Wen Jiabao himself does not need to know anything about such links (this book also basically "proves" this point). Just as Wen Jiabao defended himself at the end.)

4.
Doing business in China is nothing more than dealing with interpersonal relationships, finding the right door, and cooperating with dignitaries (whether they are local or central). Basically, the endeavor of these merchants will be stuck at a very small level, and they will not grow up. The old saying is "original sin", but the problem is that many people want to commit original sin, because these things are extremely complicated after all.

5.
And Whitney can not only learn without a teacher, but also can feed back to Aunt Zhang, giving good ideas and opinions to people in the sea, which makes the relationship between them "warm up" quickly.

6.
Of course, because of these original sins, these people can easily become "abandoned sons", or in the words of this Shen Dong, called expendable piece.

7.
According to Shen Dong, a large group of people in the CCP, including Deng Xiaoping, were able to tolerate economic reforms, tolerate these private businessmen who came to power, and engaged in entrepreneurship only because the country was bankrupt at that time.
To save the country, the party must allow private ownership and entrepreneurship to flourish, but this is only a stopgap measure. Shen Dong took the logistics project of the Capital Airport, hooked up with Li Peiying, the "boss" of Beijing Airport, and Li Ping, or "Emperor of Earth", the local power broker in charge of the area around the airport, and made a lot of money. After criticizing "capital", they could only withdraw in despair.

8.
The second-generation Reds of Xi Jinping’s faction have glorious traditions and great ambitions (comments: the most feared are the second-generation Reds). He likes the concept of large state-owned enterprises very much, and believes that public ownership is the country He did not want both public ownership and private ownership, but directly said that state-owned enterprises should be made bigger and stronger, but there is no such thing as private enterprises.

9.
In addition to big shots like Wen Jiabao, Shen Dong also wants to make friends with "Emperors" like Li Peiying. They were also regarded as small princes in the past.

10.
However, after 2012, Xi's centralization of power, simply through a few airborne officials, took over the power here. The way for "private enterprises" like Shen Dong to get money at the Capital Airport has also been cut off. The large state-owned enterprises quickly filled the void. With public power moving its fingers, it is easy to crush private enterprises.

11.
Some people say that this book is actually whitewashing Wen Jiabao. According to his book, Wen Jiabao is the kind of extremely rigorous technical bureaucrat who never causes disputes with others.

a. This kind of easygoing can make him a candidate acceptable to all parties when there is a dispute over the position of prime minister.

b. However, at the same time, this overly appeasement personality also makes it difficult for him to pull up a mountain, and it is also difficult for him to really realize any political ideals, such as the people's democracy and political freedom he often talks about.

c. Wen finally worked hard to build a faction - formed an alliance to subdue Sun Zhengcai - the result fell short, Whitney
Miss is therefore missing. Of course, this is something for later.
12.
Of course, Whitney's consulting service, which is proficient in human nature, is not only for Wen Jiabao's wife, she serves the families of many red senior officials—of course, Wen's wife is the most important one. In fact, Shen Dong said that his wife never stopped connecting. In 2008, in order to get to know more high-ranking officials (children), she went to a doctoral class in Tsinghua University that took four days a month (Comment: True™ sarcasm) to get acquainted with Xi Jinping's aides, Hu Jintao's son, vice ministers, party secretary of a city of 1.3 million people, etc

13.
Ms. Whitney was also selected by Wang Qishan, but Wang Qishan will not listen to Whitney's political consulting services like other officials. What Wang values ​​more is Whitney's relationship with Wen Jiabao (wife).

14.
Wang will often chat with Whitney (probably in order to continue to collect information on Wen Jiabao). Whitney said that Wang admired her intelligence, so she was also very talkative.

15.
Wang said that he knows that many red families are actually very conservative, and they (like I said before) tolerate them as private businessmen only because they can temporarily help the red country not go bankrupt. In fact, a large number of red aristocrats (or compradors) think so, even though they seem to be pro-Western.

16.
But Wang himself was different from these people. His advice to Whitney is to keep cash, prepare bullets, pull the trigger and have immunization to burn when large-scale privatization comes.

17.
Wang is not just a verbal compliment, but also helps him and his wife get projects, such as China Telecom's listing in the United States, which is easy money with a net profit of hundreds of millions of dollars.

18.
Interestingly, Wang Qishan likes to read "Currency War", the book by Song Hongbing. Shen Dong was stunned by this (he said "Wang Qishan, at least, should've known better; he'd worked closely with Westerners for decades.")

19.
Whitney also made an appointment with Xi Jinping and his wife through Aunt Zhang's introduction. Mr. Shen Dong can't go. He said "At a dinner such as this, everyone needed to have a purpose. I was not a necessary participant in this exercise to build another relationship." to his wife, not the other way around).

20.
Whitney is such a good social person, but he didn't get on line with Xi Jinping. During the whole meal, Xi Jinping didn't speak, and Peng Liyuan said everything, which made Whitney feel frustrated.

twenty one.
Whitney must have a good relationship with Sun Zhengcai to place a bet. Because she is Wen's person after all.

twenty two.
The vicious fight between Sun Zhengcai and Hu Chunhua gave Xi Jinping an opening instead. Sun Zhengcai was imprisoned, Hu Chunhua shut up, and everyone knew what happened next.

twenty three.
Before Sun's downfall, Shen Dong smelled that "things are changing", so he ran to the UK ahead of schedule. In 2015, he and his wife divorced. Before that, he advised his wife to retire bravely and wash her hands. By 2017, his wife had already been banned from travel, but his wife still didn't take it seriously until it was too late.

twenty four.
And the ending of the story is unknown:

25.
I've heard rumors. A leading Chinese economist told me he believes that Whitney was drugged, probably beaten, and, if she ever emerges alive, the Communist secret police will inject something into her spine that will turn her into a walking zombie. If she comes out, he said, she'll never be the same. The Chinese businessman turned dissident Guo Wengui announced that Party authorities had killed her, but he's a gossip and his allegations rarely hold. Even the New York Times reporter David Barboza, in an attempt to get me to talk, passed along rumors that Whitney was dead. Part of me thinks that one reason she hasn't appeared is that she's refused to admit guilt. She always used to say, “If you pulled my corpse out of my coffin and whipped it, you'd still find no dirt." Whitney is (or was) as strongheaded as they come.

26.
The above is just the outline of the story, covering about 1/10 of the content of the book, and 1/3 of the interesting content. The other 2/3 include Bowen's internal strife, Ling Jihua's personality and cooperation with Zhou Yongkang, Shen Dong's Hong Kong work history, Moutai Club, Xu Jiayin's family history, Xi Wang's disagreement, etc. There are opportunities to update.

28.
There are also some interesting details that ordinary book reviewers and storytellers will ignore: for example, when he said that during June 4th, there were red second generations who had already taken up guns (AK47) and prepared to defend the red country. This is the same as what I heard before The story is similar. Chen said that it seems that "our children are more reliable" (to the effect), so the red family was accelerated and bombarded into the high-level political structure, until it gradually developed into a pattern of red descendants + red engineers co-ruling the world, and Xi Jinping on stage.

29
A large number of red second and third generations, descendants of technocrats, have grown into roles similar to "compradors" and hooked up with the West. Originally, Europe and the United States believed that this generation could become a bridge for them to communicate with China and a foundation for China's social transformation. Unfortunately, Xi let them know they were wrong.

Continue to update:

According to the book, although Wen complained about his children and wife doing business before, he did not participate in these activities (at least he claimed to be so)—while Old man Jia (Jia Qinglin) and others came forward to do business in person of.

As for whether you think Wen Jiabao is a commoner prime minister, you have principles; or he is an actor, this is up to you to judge.

When NYT exposed his family's wealth, Wen Jiabao was furious. Although the CCP's top leaders did raise a gust of wind and a torrential rain because of this report, the party did not punish Wen Jiabao publicly. Of course, it is obvious that this incident has greatly weakened Wen Jiabao's position and prestige within the party.

Wen Jiabao asked for a divorce, and at one point even wanted to become a monk, seeing through the world. And these two ideas were finally saved by the "organization". Especially the latter, the top leader of an atheist party went out to become a monk, which is too ironic.

Continue to update:

Wen Jiabao seems to have a strong scholar-official plot, which will lead him to do many things that are not in line with the interests of the family, such as the event of overthrowing Bo Xilai.

According to the general theory, Bo Xilai offended a lot of bigwigs, including Jiang Zemin, Wen Jiabao, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping... and was finally taken down because of this. His political ally Zhou Yongkang and his ally Ling Jihua also fell.

This book gives more details. At that time, Zhou Yongkang tried to protect Bo Xilai, hoping that the matter would end with Wang Lijun. At this time, Wen Jiabao stood up to support Xi Jinping to get rid of Bo Xilai, and persuaded Hu Jintao about it.

And this became the starting point for breaking the balance, and the downfall of Bo Xilai finally turned into the beginning of a domino effect. The Communist Youth League, the army, the public security bureau, the armed police, and other departments have all become breakthroughs one by one, and finally Xi's dictatorship is inevitable.

Continue to update:

Wen has two promising children, the more "steady" Rusong Wen (文如松) and the spoiled brat Wen Ruchun. Note that the word "stable" is in quotation marks, because in fact, both of them are relatively high-profile, but relatively speaking, Wen Rusong is more tolerant. Despite this, Whitney still felt that Mr. Wen was too aggressive, and his high profile gave people who were jealous of him an opportunity to take advantage of it.

The "business" of these two people can actually be found on Google. For example, Wen Rusong used his father's official position to make money, hundreds of millions or hundreds of millions. Wen Rusong may be eager to prove something to his parents, but the author and the author's wife said "he could've done even better operating in the shadows". This is obvious. But Wen Rusong couldn't listen.

By the way, major investment banks have been warned and fined many times for "illegally employing the children of high-ranking Chinese officials to obtain improper benefits". Although China's official media refuted it, calling it a rumor, the U.S. still fined it and warned it after investigation, so readers should have a third trial in mind.

https://cn.nytimes.com/business/20130821/c21princeling/

https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-44395781

The funny story is the author's defense of Wen Jiabao:

Wen's wife and children are collecting a lot of luxury cars and jewelry, but it seems that Wen Jiabao doesn't know, doesn't want to care, and can't care Wen just didn't dwell much on his wife's and children's business affairs . He had larger concerns and deep down really did seem to want China to become more open and democratic.). When Wen's wife comes home wearing a priceless jade bracelet, Wen Jiabao appreciates the stone from the perspective of geology rather than market value.

By the way, the relationship between Wen Ruchun and Xu Ming ended fruitlessly, which to a certain extent became the foreshadowing of this old brother's later downfall. Wen Ruchun later married Liu Chunhang, and this gentleman started to rise like a rocket in the China Banking Regulatory Commission.

Brothers, if you want to change your class status, it is basically impossible to take the road of the Internet. You should consider finding a daughter of the second generation of red...

Continue to update:

Duan Weihong (Whitney) has never believed in free markets, fair trade and other "Western neoliberal economics". Essentially, modern entrepreneurship is not compatible with these people.

What these people believe in is guanxi (she has enormous faith in her guanxi network to boost our business), which is more in line with the ancient Chinese traditional business model (that is, go hand in hand with red officials, With Wang Qishan, Sun Zhengcai, and other ministers , vice-ministers, and assistants in her Rolodex, Whitney had faith that we'd be able to find a new guardian inside the Party whom we could serve). Red top businessman is the highest dream.

[Comments] Coach Guo Wengui is the same thing. To expect these people to engage in liberalization or democratization is simply nonsense.

It is precisely because of this fear of the free market that "Chinese entrepreneurs" like Whitney are very reluctant to deploy overseas. Shen Dong suggested to Whitney to expand overseas business many times, but Whitney rejected them all. As I said in my previous update, Shen Dong’s success rate is far worse than that of Whitney, so even though his vision is high and his views are correct, he is very willing to take away their assets for international layout (Once we'd made it in Beijing, I naturally thought we could take on the rest of China and the world. Whitney resisted, and because the money was in her name I had to go along. I did so unwillingly.)

Continue to update:

Regarding Ling Jihua's family, the author said that Ling Jihua is the chief eunuch in the traditional sense of the CCP, who is obsessed with work and actually has no time to take care of family affairs.

When the Ferrari in Linggu had an accident, he also ran to destroy the evidence immediately, instead of caring about his son's life or death (of course, it can also be said that he is dead anyway, and people cannot be resurrected after death. It is useless to care about it. Essentially, this is a correct communist atheistic attitude).

Eliminating the evidence requires the cooperation of Zhou Yongkang, so the hook-up between the two entered a new stage until both of them were taken down.

Gu Liping (Ling Jihua’s wife, the legendary person who “nurtured” Rui Chenggang, comment: This is ridiculous, I can only say that Rui Chenggang has offended too many people, and the main problem between Rui and Gu should be leaking state secrets ) actually She is a very low-key, introverted and traditional official insider. She never goes to high-end luxury stores. She is unnatural when Whitney intends to bribe her like he has bribed other officials.

When she came to a luxury store in Hong Kong, she felt that things worth tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars were ridiculously expensive, while Whitney (and wealthy businessmen such as Xu Jiayin, who will appear later) bought tens of millions of dollars.

Ling Gu (that is, the one who was killed in a car accident) was accused of running a "secret political society" (secret political society) that conspired against the party, but the only similar thing he ever did was a reading club.

Continue to update:

Wen Jiabao and his wife donated all their property to the state in 2013 in exchange for guaranteeing that they would not be liquidated. In this way, they are only keeping and creating wealth for the country and the people, and it is not considered corruption.

Rewrite the history and frame the new collective memories.

Continue to update:

Compared with Wen Jiabao's family's wealth collection, Shen Dong said that Jia Qinglin's wealth accumulation is shocking and weeping ghosts and gods.

With smooth back hair, round cheeks and a big belly, Jia Qinglin is a happy, sociable guy with an easy smile.

His corruption is a legend. In the early 1990s, when he was the vice-governor, governor, and party secretary of Fujian Province (Fujian Province is located in the north of Hong Kong and across from Taiwan), there were rumors that Mr. Jia directly set up a giant smuggling enterprise (the more he looked, the more he looked like Lai Changxing) . It is a smuggling on a grand scale involving thousands of foreign cars, billions of foreign cigarettes, tons of foreign beer, and more than one-sixth of China's oil imports, all flowing into China through military ports along the coast of Fujian.

Continue to update:

Jia Qinglin's son-in-law David Li (Li Botan, chairman of Beijing Zhaode Investment Company) organized a Moutai meeting. Che Feng served as the vice president and vice chairman of the "Maotai Club". In 2013, Xi did not dare to touch Jiang Zemin because he still needed Jiang's support. While related political clubs in Beijing were shut down one by one due to turmoil, David's Moutai club was safe and sound.

You always have to pay back when you come out to hang out. The good days of Moutai Club did not survive 2015. In June, Che Feng was taken away by relevant Chinese authorities for investigation. Che Feng not only laundered a huge amount of money, but the bigger problem was selling information to "Western intelligence agencies. Che Feng's case involved Ma Jian, Guo Wengui's old backer. So the two stories of Duan Weihong and Guo Wengui can be linked together .

Continue to update:

Xu Jiayin is also a frequent visitor to the Moutai Club. In 2011, Xu Jiayin and Yu Guoxiang finally got paid to join the coveted Moutai Club, which is difficult to get even if you have money.

In Moutai Club, hundreds of thousands of bribes in exchange for billions of dollars in Doudizhu games often occur. Shen Dong said, "In China, politics is the key to riches, not the other way around (In China, politics is the key to riches, not the other way around)".

In such a game, Li Botan once threatened, "Prison is the Whampoa Military Academy for Chinese businessmen" —— Everybody else nodded in solemn agreement, clinked glasses, and downed a flute of Krug Champagne.

(The author announces to stop updating)

This series is Weilu articles, it may be locked after 48 hours, track my Weilu or my account so as not to miss it

My roadside stall of Weilu border wine ｜Follow my battlefield islanders ｜Follow the theme #边带岛民说金门