Not long ago I made my way through Red Roulette: an Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China, by Desmond Shum. I forget where I heard about it, probably one of the periodicals I read regularly, you know which ones they are now. It must have gotten a good review.
And indeed, it is not a bad book. Nor, however, is it a particularly good book. The author is no doubt an impressive, determined and talented guy. He came from not much in Hong Kong and made a bunch of money in China by working hard, playing the game, having good ideas, and hooking up with the right people, so having some luck. He's a good looking dude too and an athlete, probably didn't hurt.
And yes he does give some details into how the system works, how corrupt it is, etc. But it didn't really open many conceptual doors and it was overall marred by the fact that the author is as tarred by the brush he describes as anyone, save for the fact that he never acquired enough power to really fuck anybody. Or, at least, not that he tells us. He criticizes the Chinese elite for being money-grubbers with one side of his mouth, then with the other he tells us that he got a Lamborghini or something like that: "Because I wanted the experience of driving a car like that." Complete and utter horse shit.
I finished the book more or less because I had started it and I own it and I had dropped too many books recently without finishing them. This pales beside books like Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi, James Fallows' China Airborne, any of Peter Hessler's books on China.
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