By Jerome A. Cohen
Here is an excerpt from Red Roulette. It is a “must” read on China for many reasons. Publicity in the London press on Friday stimulated a secret PRC response that, having quickly been revealed by the book’s author, will enhance its prominence. As I have previously noted, the book’s scheduled publication today (Sept 7) required some sort of response from Beijing, one that would reluctantly confirm the continuing existence of the “disappeared” Ms. Whitney Duan. The ex-wife of author Desmond Shum was kidnapped in Beijing by Communist Party agents four years ago. Shum’s courageous determination to finally expose this important story will now be tested as he awaits further PRC reactions, secret and public. In view of obvious concerns for the safety and welfare of his family, his ex-wife, his friends, and himself, this could not have been a simple decision. The second of the two phone calls that he just received from his suddenly-emerged ex-wife, still a captive of the Chinese secret police, was especially sinister in explicitly threatening the harm that may occur to Shum, his ex-wife and even their 12-year-old son if Shum failed to stop publication of the book, an obviously impossible task on the very eve of publication.
The oddest thing about ex-wife Whitney Duan’s emergence to make two last-minute phone efforts to stop publication of Shum’s book is indeed its timing. What might this tell us about elite politics in China? Was this a mere pro forma protest? An advance reader’s edition of the book has been circulating for weeks. Moreover, Shum has been a person of interest to PRC security people for some time, at least for almost five years since his business partner and former wife was first banned from leaving China and then kidnapped. Undoubtedly, he was long under scrutiny by PRC security agents, and his communications must have been sufficiently monitored to indicate that he was seriously at work on a tell-all book. Why, then, did the security people wait to intervene until the day before the book’s formal publication?
A second question worth pondering is why the ugly explicit threats to harm Shum, his son and the ex-wife were made and why not until the second phone call. The callers (Ms. Duan was obviously not alone and apparently in the hands of captors who dictated the bulk of the script) must have anticipated that the sinister threats would be made public, enhancing the current Chinese Communist Party leadership’s foreign image as a band of ruthless thugs.
It seems appropriate that The Wire should publish an excerpt of the book since Shum describes the impact on China’s elite politics of the remarkable reporting by David Barboza before he left the NY Times for The Wire.
This book may well be regarded as one of the very best popular accounts ever to be published about the PRC in English. (Recall Robert Loh’s “Escape from Red China” of the 1950s; Jean Pasqualini’s “Prisoner of Mao” in the ‘60s; and Chen Guangcheng’s more recent memoir of escape from arbitrary imprisonment almost a decade ago). It not only gives a vivid, detailed picture of the corrupt nexus between business and the Communist Party’s ruling class, but also offers a persuasive interpretation, backed by facts, of how Xi Jinping ruthlessly moved to eliminate all rivals to his exclusive power. In addition, it provides real insights into upper class contemporary Chinese social life and the complex human relations of a high-powered married couple bent upon manipulating the system to their greed. I also especially appreciate both the book’s eloquent condemnation of a regime grounded in blatant resort to lawless arbitrary detention and its requiem for the now dead Hong Kong freedoms that benefited many of Shum’s formative years. His story reeks of authenticity and is a wonderful read, thanks in part, as the author makes clear, to the skillful cooperation of the distinguished journalist-scholar John Pomfret.
Beijing has a lot to answer for, and Shum has made it impossible for the PRC to continue keeping silent.