Hong Kong-raised businessman Desmond Shum details his experience of China’s Communist Party (CCP) elite or the so-called red aristocracy in his new book.
Red Roulette is a no holds barred account of the life he lived as a wealthy businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist in China in the 1990s and early 2000s.
But his story is more intriguing following the sudden reappearance of his ex-wife, and billionaire, Weihong ‘Whitney’ Duan who vanished without a trace four years ago.
Desmond Shum Photo: Jonty Davies
Listen to the full interview here
Shum, now based in the United Kingdom, tells Kathryn Ryan he was surprised to receive a phone call from her just a few days after news came out that his book was due to be released.
"She asked me to stop the publishing of the book."
With only a few days' warning, he says it was out of his hands even if he did want to comply, because the book would've already been in stocked or on its way to stores.
"I was publishing my memoir, I'm 53 now, it's my life ... so I was writing down what I saw, what I experienced, what I did and what I was thinking at the time, I guess that was forbidden.
"I selected the publishing day on the fourth-year anniversary of her disappearance. Nobody had heard from her, including her parents, whom I'd kept in touch with over the years.
"Her sudden reappearance, it's a pleasant surprise to all our family but her message is a warning shot to me.
"I think that without this book coming out, without the news, she wouldn't reappear, and my son wouldn't have got to talk to her. So for all of us, that's a big step forward."
He says he believes she was under duress and speculated that either her phone was tapped or somebody was sitting near her to instruct her.
"She started the conversation telling me she signed a paper of temporary release and she said they can snatch her back at any time."
He says Duan was barred from leaving China six months before her disappearance.
"There's no doubt she was taken by the government, only the government never acknowledged taking her."
When he asked her what the charge against her was, she told him she couldn't disclose that because it was confidential nor did she talk of her experience, he says.
"She did say she had no news of the outside world in the last four years. Her mum actually passed away back in June, and she just learned about it.
"It didn't seem like she knew the pandemic had been going on for two years now."
The couple met in the early 2000s through a business deal and she introduced him to the world of communist elite, Shum says.
"Although I had been doing business in China for a decade, it's something that was shocking and surprising. It was like wow, is that really how China works."
Shum also says he was part of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference for about a decade and was asked by the United Front to meddle in the Hong Kong local elections.
"We were asked to pay for people to get [them] to vote for a certain candidate... and then we need report back how many people we motivated to vote for the candidate they suggested.
"Although I report back to say 'oh I did this or that', I never believed in this thing ... I never actually did that."
The couple made it big in their field of real estate through guanxi, or personal connections, he says.
Her friendship with the wife of former premier Wen Jiabao helped them not only become business partners with each other but also with ministers and director generals, he says.
"It's very complicated, you're mixing profit with personal relationships, there's no clear rule in how you operate and the rule develops as you go along, especially for me because I didn't know the rules of the game for that crowd until I was sometime into it."
But after news reports circulated about the immense wealth of the political elite, leader President Xi Jinping announced a crackdown on corruption – which Shum believes is what Duan was swept up in.
"We have to remember not to mistake who is the real benefiter and real master for corruption, aristocrats ... descended by bloodline, the early founders of Communist Party, or the generals of the early days of Communist Party.
"The other thing I demonstrate in the book with anecdotes, this anti-corruption drive is more about taking out political rivals than anti-corruption."
Since then, Chinese billionaires and bosses, like Alibaba's Jack Ma, have also disappeared.
Shum says disappearances in China's system are rather common but for it to last four years - like in his ex-wife's case - is not normal.
He separated from his wife in 2015 and left for the UK with his son.
In a statement to the CNN, the Chinese Embassy in London rejected Shum’s claims.
"The groundless accusations and wanton slanders against Chinese leaders and system by Desmond Shum in his book Red Roulette are complete lies."
In response, Shum told the CNN he wasn't making accusations, merely recounting his experiencing and people can judge it for themselves.
He says he wants his book to shed light on how China's system operates.
"I think there's a lot of mystery, a lot of hot air around what CCP really is, how China really works, I just want to tell people this is what I experienced.
"I think it has never happened in recent history, a business person in my situation, a top echelon in the business world, have intimate interactions with the top echelon of the political leaders of China, actually come out to tell the story."