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Honestly with Bari Weiss

Vanished by China: One Couple’s Story

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The Free Press

Society & Culture, News

4.67.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2021

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Desmond Shum knows well the cost of doing business in China. Born to a humble family that was marginalized during the Cultural Revolution, he became a wildly successful entrepreneur, along with his ex-wife Whitney, to the tune of billions of dollars. But just as quickly as the Chinese Communist Party elite helped enrich the couple, it tore them down. In 2017, Whitney disappeared, not to be seen or heard from for four years. She reemerged only on the eve of Desmond’s new book, Red Roulette. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the CCP routinely disappears people who fall out of the Party’s favor. Most recently, tennis champion Peng Shuai vanished after accusing a high-ranking official of sexual assault.  Today, Desmond Shum talks about how all of this happens, as well as his personal experiences during China’s economic boom, how companies like Blackrock both support and fall for CCP propaganda and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Economist provides independent journalism for independent thinking and has been

0:05.1

championing progress for almost 200 years.

0:08.3

With the Economist, you gain access to fact-based, deeply researched expert analysis of world events and topics

0:14.3

ranging from business and culture to politics, science and technology.

0:18.2

Tune into the global conversation with reporting from correspondence around the world,

0:23.0

available in-app online through podcasts and print.

0:26.5

So for fact sake, search the economist. Desmond in 2017, your ex-wife and the mother of your child, she disappeared in China without

0:41.5

a trace.

0:46.4

And then four years later, on the eve of the publication of your book, Red Roulette, she suddenly out of nowhere called your phone.

0:51.8

What did she say? So, you know, she spent the first 10 minutes on the fall with my, with our son.

1:02.2

I'm Barry Weiss, this is honestly, and today we start with a phone call.

1:07.0

You know it's a touching moment. I mean she she asks him how tall are you now what you wait you know how you doing in school you know and

1:18.4

then she asked me to speak with me separately afterward and then essentially she's asking me to stop publishing the book.

1:29.1

And what did she tell you about where she was?

1:38.0

She told me first off, she said she was a, she signed a paper of temporary release, so she said they can take her back any time.

1:42.0

They can bring her back into disappearance if we don't comply

1:46.0

with her what they demand.

1:48.8

What did you say back to her?

1:50.7

I said, you know, I can't stop it now. In my mind is like this is some stupid crazy

1:56.2

bureaucrat saying, you know, thinking the rest of the world operates same as China.

2:00.9

And in China at a snap of finger, the government can take down any book across bookstores,

2:08.3

across country, across entire China overnight.

...

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