Desmond Shum > Quotes

“笨鸟先飞 - Stupid birds need to start flying early.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“LUCK lies at the heart of most fortunes.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Executives at state-owned enterprises love to build hotels because they can use them like clubhouses to entertain contacts or woo mistresses, all at state expense.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“if you want to jump, you must first learn to bow.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“David had made a fortune apparently by leveraging his father-in-law’s connections.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Equating a prison term served by a businessman with a military education completed by a patriotic Chinese cadet was blasphemous.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“As Party chief in Chongqing, Bo raised his profile by launching political campaigns redolent of the mass mobilizations that occurred under Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Western commentators insisted that people like Wolfgang who’d been educated overseas were agents of change in China—that they’d import universal values from the West and push China in a better direction. But people like Wolfgang never saw themselves in that role.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“寧鳴而死，不默而生。──范仲淹 ∣導讀∣”
― Desmond Shum, 紅色賭盤：令中共高層害怕，直擊現代中國金權交易背後的腐敗內幕

“Just a few years ago,” I mused out loud, “we’d be lucky to be pedaling around on Flying Pigeon bikes. Now we’re in private jets. From there to here in less than a lifetime, it’s enough to make your head spin.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“This vastly different treatment of two corrupt officials was a telltale sign of how things were being run. Red aristocrats got a prison sentence; commoners got a bullet in the head.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“The economic changes Deng ushered in were driven not by any belief in the tenets of free-market capitalism but by necessity.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Whitney actually stopped going out with her because she thought Gu lacked the political backing, the vision, and the will to get anything done. “She’s all talk and no action,” Whitney complained.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“In the ebb and flow of life, if you’re never beholden to anyone, Whitney would say, no one will ever be beholden to you and you’ll never build deeper relationships.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Taiwan’s democratization process shook Communist Party bigwigs because they saw in it a potential road map for mainland China and thus a threat to the Party’s monopoly on power.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“In China, the Communist Party can fabricate evidence, force confessions, and level whatever charges it chooses, untethered to the facts.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“best thing about a private club was that you could open the club on state-owned property, harnessing a government-owned asset for personal gain.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“China was the intellectual property rip-off capital of the world, churning out pirated software and DVDs with abandon; no Chinese law enforcement agency in the year 2000 was interested in taking our case.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“For me, Robertson’s cultivation of Feng Bo peeled back the curtain on the inner workings of a political system that mouthed Communist slogans while the families of senior officials gorged themselves at the trough of economic reforms. These sons and daughters functioned like an aristocracy; they intermarried, lived lives disconnected from those of average Chinese, and made fortunes selling access to their parents, inside information, and regulatory approvals that were keys to wealth.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Many in the West, unhappy with the West’s obsession with individual rights, buy into this fantasy that the Chinese Communist Party focuses on the common good.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“In China, the Communist Party can fabricate evidence, force confessions, and level whatever charges it chooses, untethered to the facts. And, of course, many people gullibly believe the Party’s charges because the system is so opaque.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“when cultivating someone powerful in China, the pursuer should never appear too eager.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“As Xi’s corruption campaign played out, I finally concluded that it was more about burying potential rivals than about stamping out malfeasance.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Having arrived in the United States immediately after the June 4 crackdown in China, as a student from Greater China I was eligible, thanks to an Executive Order signed by President George H. W. Bush, for a green card. I passed on the chance.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“License plates were a huge status symbol in China. There were many different license plates on the streets of Beijing. There were military plates from the different services. There were plates from Party headquarters in Zhongnanhai. There were black plates for foreigners. The plates constituted a language of their own. And with Beijing’s streets constantly jammed, having high-status plates was a must. With the right plates, you could cruise down the bus-only lane, drive on sidewalks, make an illegal U-turn, run a red light, and park in a no-parking zone near a favored restaurant.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“Control what you can control. Don’t bother with the rest. You will always, I tell myself, get out of the pool.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“The Chinese Communist Party functions like the Mafia; it has its own code of omertà.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“It’s like China’s economic growth rate. The Party sets a target and every year China miraculously hits the bull’s-eye, down to the decimal point.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“January 2014, the Party ordered high-end nightclubs to shut down in Beijing. But David Li’s Moutai Club didn’t close its doors.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China

“I established the Tsinghua Kaifeng Family Heritage Center at Tsinghua University to help wealthy Chinese families think strategically about how to use their resources to benefit society.”
― Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China