Review of Desmond Shum’s Red Roulette, 2021
Red Roulette, Desmond Shum, 2021
This book is Exhibit A for the axiom, the victors (or in this case, the escapees) write the histories.
This book is a personal story of the whirlwind that is modern China. With all of the details you’d expect from a personal narrative, the book “feels” real, and certainly and certainly most of it verifiable is. But there are limits to the authenticity. In my experience, almost two decades in China, there is no way that one can get as involved with business and govt in China and remain clean, or as Shum likes to say about Whitney, “you can dig up my corpse and there would still be no dirt on it.” There is a lot of mud slung in this book, and conveniently none of it sticks to the author himself.
One of the first insights is Shum’s willingness to offer up both his own insecurities and willingness to please (and build China) and at the same time claim that for decades in all the tawdry business dealings that he was never much personally involved. Second is his casting of Premiere Wen as an ignorant old grandpa. Shum takes pains to point out that Wen was a master at keeping his head down and still rising to the pinnacle of the Party. But just because he was the least objectionable option to be Premiere at the time, doesn’t mean he wasn’t smart and calculated, and certainly not ignorant. Useful idiots don’t rise very high in China. Other books (McGregor’s, The Party 2010) have come out, not to mention the Panama Papers and other reporting, that shed much more light on Wen’s family and their billion-dollar dealings—no way that you can be surrounded by that much wealth and power and not have a clue about what’s going on. Wen knew the system, at the very least he knew what to ignore. Shum says that he shepherded Wen to factory openings and other gala events (James Palmer in an FP book review notes that these public visits have all been scrubbed from the media and history (Oct 2021)). Shum soft pedals this level of corruption and their personal involvement with Wen, limiting it to his wife. And maybe that’s the line of personal security that is necessary; Shum can critique the corruption in the lives of people connected to the Party, but detailing corruption in the office of a sitting Premiere is too sensitive.
Protection of Shum’s son might really be the key driver here. And I’m willing to admit that I might be wrong , but every time I listen to him speak and the articles I read about his justification for going public, it seems odd to me that to “protect” his son, he exposes the corruption of his wife and the Party. To my way of thinking, wouldn’t it be safer to not discuss the family’s dirty laundry and keep their heads down? Embarrassing the Party is a sure way to make sure that there is never a good-faith negotiation on behalf of his wife. Rocking the CCP boat is not going to get Whitney out of whatever confinement she’s currently in. And how does public exposure help a child cope with a missing parent? I do understand that making this public might give the son a bit of protection—if anything every happens to him the world will question the Party. But how much difference is there living in the spotlight vs living with a target on your back?
Over an over we’re told of both Whitney’s ambition and his role as the noble fool—her capable but dutiful boy-toy. Premiere Wen is cast in the same light—too stupid to really I know what’s going on with his own family. At the same time he regularly reminds readers that it take conniving and deep connections, skills and bravado, meticulous machinations and luck to be successful at the top levels of Chinese business and politics. And yet, some how neither he nor the Premiere have any of these necessary traits. Both are just smart handsome men being dragged along by wickedly driven professional women, neither of them really understanding what’s actually going on around them. How are we supposed to believe that either of them can maintain their positions (head of a country, head of corporate boards) with minimal professional and zero commonsense skills?! Sure, Shum eventually “grows up” but he is never more than an idealistic simpleton that gets repeatedly run over by people and a corrupt system that he was just trying to make better. It’s just too much.
Understandably, the book could use a few more details in the description of how deals are actually worked out. Without explaining, he uses phrases like “Sun helped Whitney get approval,” for activities of questionable legal status. Anyone that has worked in China (or any other developing country with a questionable legal system and authoritarian governmental structures) knows what this means—gifts, bribes, access money (see Ang’s China’s Gilded Age), sex (see Zhang’s Red Lights), etc. All of the people that are included in the stories are eventually being taken down for corruption (Sun, Auntie Zhang, local political leaders and business partners). And Whitney and the noble fool author are actively trying to “stay close” to all of these people, living beyond their means, securing loans and land and opportunities via their connections but still “don’t even have dirt on their corpses?!” Come on, man.
Despite these issues, there are many comments and stories that lend an authentic feel, to me at least. These include:
Everything in China is hierarchical, even the education. Chinese learning is thought to be the core while western learning is seen as a practical addition to be “used,” like a tool, only when necessary. China and Chinese(ness) is explicitly prioritized—giving weight to hierarchy in ALL relationships and insulating Chinese from the outside world.
“He’d run afoul of the government later on, proving that the ones who fall in China are usually the most capable.” I’ve said before that in China’s corrupt meritocracy, it takes both skill and guanxi to succeed.
“Unlike many Chinese officials who handed their homework as assignments to subordinates, he actually wrote his own master’s thesis.” There are rumors that even the top leaders in China have plagiarized degrees. I know many people that have done this.
“When a man attains enlightenment [or in this case the premiership], even his pets ascend to heaven.” Anyone who tells you that guanxi is a relic of China’s past have never done (their own) business in China.
“I was unprepared for the job… I couldn’t even drink Moutai…” And MBA is not enough to do business in China.
“Because of US regulations, [corporate] leadership needed to pretend not to know [about corruption]. A lot of Western businesses in China adopt a similar, don’t-ask-don’t-tell business model.” If you’re not managing your own corporate-government relationships in China, someone in your company is doing if for you—and you’d better find out who it is and where their loyalties lie.
“In some ways, China was little different from the rest of the world. Money, sex, and power drove people. Whitney and I could provide access to power, so we needed to offer less money and arrange for less sex (less but not none, as James Palmer points out in the FP article). We rarely gave cash. Instead, we doled out presents: a set of golf clubs for $10,000 here, a $15,000 watch there. … It wasn’t so much a bribe as a sign of our affection.” Gifts between friends aren’t corrupt right?
“…the alcohol stripped away my natural reserve, and it brought me and these men closer.” Many ethnographies about China note that the drinking (and sex) are used specifically to bond businessmen together in a corrupt system that offers few other options for trust.
“Northerners thought people from Shanghai were stingy, unmanly, and sneaky—in a word, Westernized.” Regional stereotypes dominate understandings of the other in a population with limited mobility.
The short narrative about Wolfgang (p.274-5) also reminds me of people that I’ve met in China. “Wolfgang’s and I used to talk about the Chinese system and he regaled me with stories of playing Party bigwigs with prostitutes. He noted that a particularly effective way to bond with a Party official was to share a room with him and several girls at once. He saw the shortcomings of the system, its corruption, and how it twisted people’s souls. He wouldn’t defend China in terms of ideology or values, but he was happy to be mining his bloodline to make a mint.”
“For years, western commentators insisted that people like Wolfgang who’d be educated overseas were agents of change in China—that they’d import universal values from the West and push China in a better direction. But people like Wolfgang never saw themselves in this role. His interest was in China’s remaining the way it was. … I viewed [Wolfgang and others like him] as highly competent enablers of an increasingly toxic affliction, Chinese Communism.”
There is a “hard-hearted, zero-sum, winner-take-all approach” pursued by many in China. … That give-no-quarter feather is a function of the Communist system. From an early age, we Chinese are pitted against one another in a rat race and told that only the strong survive. We’re not taught o cooperate, or to be team players. Rather we learn how to divide the world into enemies and allies—and that alliances are temporary and allies expendable. We’re prepared to inform on our parents, teachers, and fiends if the Party tells us to. And we’re instructed that the only think that matter is winning and that only suckers suffer moral qualms.”
“Everybody mouths the same lie, including foreigners, because the Party is so adept at concealing the truth and silencing dissenting voices. It’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction.”
Chapter 6 is my favorite—a character study with Chinese characteristics. Details about what impresses, lasts, and is taken advantage of in people in the world of Chinese power. Factions are both deadly and the way up. Gatekeepers are necessary and also the source of backstabbing. Being open is loved by others, and at the same time too exposing. Keeping your head down keeps it on your shoulders but leaves you with nothing notable.
Chapter 10 is also a gem for a couple of reasons. First, this, “[Whitney—from the PRC] and I have fundamentally different perceptions about risk. She never saw a potential downside to holding assets, but I’d lived through the Asian Financial Crisis of 2007. She and the rest of her generation of Chinese entrepreneurs had never experienced a downturn. If there was a down cycle, it was always followed by a V-shaped recovery and a huge bounce back.” The irrational confidence of Chinese nationalists cum investors is real and drives projects that would otherwise not move forward.
Second is this narrative about guanxi. “…to make the project a success. Whitney ran interference for me from the top down. But I also needed to work hard to get things moving from the bottom up. … Being together with [government officials] demonstrated that I was part of their group. … The whole idea was to reinforce the sense of belonging. This was critical in a system where the rules regarding what was legal and what was proscribed were full of vast areas of gray, and every time you wanted to accomplish anything you had to wade into the gray. In the West, laws are generally clear and courts are independent, so you know where the lines are. But in China the rules were intentionally fuzzy, constantly changing, and always backdated. And the courts functioned as a tool of Party control. So that’s why building this sense of belonging was so crucial. To convince someone to venture into the gray zone with you, you first had to convince him or her to trust you. Only then could you take the leap together.
I of course, can’t judge what’s true or not, or better said, distorted or misrepresented, about Shum’s stories. And, to be completely honest, I think that most of the book sounds completely believable, and projects, people, and histories are verifiable. But his constant return to both “we were just trying to build a better China,” and the everyone is corrupt, but not us positioning of Shum and Whitney is just too much whitewashing to be true with the people and money that he discusses.
The book is a tawdry tale of sex, money, bribes, and connections used to skirt red tape in an authoritative and extra-legal system. In the end, everyone, literally everyone but Shum himself is either implicated or disappeared or both The unwitting lapdog somehow kept himself morally and legally clean from the toxic waste that is Chinese politics and economic development.
There just seems to b a lot of his personal story that isn’t being told. That aside, the book is a readable footnote to more academic works on the actual history and economy of the PRC over the last 50 years. It personalizes the histories and news stories of growth and political machinations. It’s a quick read and, for the most part, “feels” authentic.
