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 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Missed our conversation with Annie Duke — World Series poker champion and author of Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts? Catch up by listening to episode 40: Annie Duke | How to Make Decisions Like a Poker Champ here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!