Chinesisches Roulette

The SPIEGEL bestseller that the Chinese government doesn't want us to read: Money, Power, and Arbitrary Rule in China. "About the greed for money, sex, and power, and an empire that strikes back." - Süddeutsche Zeitung.

When is one truly powerful? When there’s a billion in the bank? When the wife makes big deals shopping with the Prime Minister's wife? Desmond Shum grows up in Shanghai and Hong Kong. After studying in the USA, he dives into Beijing's business life with the perspective of an outsider and the right connections. He makes money through real estate transactions. His wife Whitney maintains relationships with the wives of important political figures. Yet, Desmond Shum finds his hands tied when Whitney, a billionaire like him, disappears without a trace. Who could Whitney Duan have posed a danger to? What did she know about President Xi Jinping - or what other trouble with the state leadership could be behind her sudden disappearance?

"This book deserves many readers." - Kai Strittmatter, author of The Reinvention of Dictatorship. Now with an exclusive afterword for the German paperback edition: "In China, politics is the key to wealth." - Desmond Shum.

A gripping eyewitness account from the newly wealthy economic elite of China: The background of the "explosion" of Chinese capitalism in the 2000s, told by someone who was involved and profited. Rarely has anyone dared to write so openly about what power means in China. An eye-opening look at the Chinese elite, excessive enrichment, and the conflict between capitalism and the Communist Party.

"Shum paints a portrait of the hedonistic political elite at the beginning of the millennium." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "An impressive book." - Schweizer Monat. "Shum exposes the machinations of the Communist Party of China and those of the billionaires it has produced." - Barbara Demick.