But after Shum wrote a memoir denouncing the system that could detain his ex-wife without consequence, he finally heard from her. But “Red Roulette,” Shum’s insider account of of business and politics in Xi Jinping’s China, was already in various stages of distribution. “At the moment, every private entrepreneur faces a huge question: where does Xi Jinping want to take China?” Shum said in a video call. Li, who made arrangements for China’s party heavyweights when they landed in Beijing, was found guilty of corruption and executed. He and Duan were willing players in the “roulette-like political environment of the New China,” he writes, not innocent bystanders.
