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The Jordan Harbinger Show

684: Desmond Shum | Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in China

The Jordan Harbinger Show

Jordan Harbinger

Education, Science, Business

4.812.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2022

⏱️ 76 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

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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!

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

0:03.0

The reason I assume the state have taken her is

0:06.0

first of all she was banned from the state by the state from leaving.

0:10.0

Secondly, on the day she vanished,

0:12.0

three other staff were banished at the same time.

0:16.0

The three staff, three of them were banished for three years

0:19.0

and then reappeared three years later.

0:22.0

And then she came out two days before my book came out.

0:25.0

And it called me to test with the book launch.

0:31.0

Welcome to the show I'm Jordan Harbinger.

0:33.0

On the Jordan Harbinger Show we decode the stories,

0:35.0

secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people.

0:38.0

We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs,

0:41.0

spies and psychologists, even the occasional

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Emmy-nominated comedian, national security adviser

0:46.0

or economic hitman, and each episode turns our guests

0:49.0

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0:56.0

If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it,

0:58.0

our episode's starter packs are the place to do it.

1:01.0

These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic

1:03.0

that will help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show.

...

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