Rogue Nation

China’s law-enforcers are going global but their methods are far from orthodox

The Economist

LAST year’s big blockbuster in China, “Wolf Warrior 2”, assured citizens not to fear running into trouble abroad: “Remember, the strength of China always has your back!” 

That is doubtless a comfort to patriots. 

But for those who seek to escape the government’s clutches, its growing willingness to project its authority beyond its borders is a source of alarm. 

In pursuit of fugitives, the Chinese authorities are increasingly willing to challenge the sovereignty of foreign governments and to seek the help of international agencies, even on spurious grounds.
Fugitives from China used to be mainly dissidents. 

The government was happy to have them out of the country, assuming they could do less harm there. But since Xi Jinping came to office in 2012 and launched a sweeping campaign against corruption, another type of fugitive has increased in number: those wanted for graft. 

Though they do not preach democracy, they pose a greater threat to the regime. 

Most are officials or well-connected business folk, insiders familiar with the workings of government. And in the internet age it is far easier for exiles to maintain ties with people back home.
So China has changed its stance, and started to hunt fugitives down. 

It has managed to repatriate nearly 4,000 suspects from some 90 countries. 

It has also recovered about 9.6bn yuan ($1.5bn). 

Still, nearly 1,000 remain on the run, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China’s anti-graft watchdog
The problem is that only 36 countries have ratified extradition treaties with China. 

France, Italy, Spain and South Korea are among them, but few other rich democracies. 

It is easy for Chinese suspects seeking refuge abroad to argue that they will not get a fair trial if returned home, since the government does not believe that courts should be independent. 

Last year the country’s top judge denounced the very idea as a “false Western ideal”. 

What is more, China has thousands of political prisoners. 

Torture is endemic.

The hard way
These failings have forced the Chinese authorities to resort to less-straightforward methods to bring suspects home. 

Typically, they send agents, often travelling unofficially, to press exiles to return. 

The tactics involved are similar to ones used at home to induce people to do the Communist Party’s bidding. 

Many are subjected to persistent surveillance, intimidation and violence. 

Occasionally, Chinese agents attempt to kidnap suspects abroad and bring them home by force.
If runaways have family in China, those left behind are often subject to threats and harassment. 

In an interview in 2014 a member of Shanghai’s Public Security Bureau said that “a fugitive is like a flying kite: even though he is abroad, the string is in China.” 

Exiles are told that their adult relatives will lose their jobs and that their children will be kicked out of school if they do not return. 

Police pressed Guo Xin, one of China’s 100 most-wanted officials, to return from America by preventing her elderly mother and her sister from leaving China, and barring a brother living in Canada from entering the country, among other restrictions. 

In the end she gave in and went home.
In countries with closer ties to China, agents have occasionally dispensed with such pressures in favour of more resolute action. 

Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, says that he and other exiled dissidents have long avoided Cambodia, Thailand and other countries seen as friendly to China for fear of being detained by Chinese agents. 

The case of Gui Minhai, a Swede who had renounced his Chinese citizenship, suggests they are right to do so. 

He was kidnapped by Chinese officials in Thailand in 2015 and taken to the mainland. 

In a seemingly forced confession broadcast on Chinese television, he admitted to a driving offence over a decade earlier.
Many countries, naturally, are upset about covert actions by Chinese operatives on their soil. 

In 2015 the New York Times reported that the American authorities had complained to the Chinese government about agents working illegally in America, often entering the country on tourist or trade visas. 

Foreign diplomats note that officials from China’s Ministry of Public Security travel as delegates of trade and tourism missions from individual provinces. 

Chinese police were caught in Australia in 2015 pursuing a tour-bus driver accused of bribery. Though France has an extradition treaty with China, French officials found out about the repatriation of Zheng Ning, a businessman seeking refuge there, only when China’s own anti-graft website put a notice up saying police had successfully “persuaded” him to return to China. 

The French authorities had not received a request for his extradition.
This pattern is especially disturbing since the anti-corruption campaign is used as an excuse to pursue people for actions that would not be considered crimes in the countries where they have taken refuge—including political dissent. 

It beggars belief that the Chinese authorities would have worked so hard to capture Mr Gui, the kidnapped Swede, just to answer for a driving offence. 

His real crime was to have published books in Hong Kong about the Chinese leadership. 

By the same token, last year the Chinese embassy in Bangkok reportedly asked the Thai government to detain the wife of a civil-rights lawyer after she escaped over China’s south-western border. 

Her only known offence was to have married a man who had the cheek to defend Chinese citizens against the state.
Increasingly, China is trying to use Interpol, an international body for police co-operation, to give its cross-border forays a veneer of respectability. 

Interpol has no power to order countries to arrest individuals, but many democratic states frequently respond to the agency’s “red notices” requesting a detention as a precursor to extradition. 

In 2015 China’s government asked Interpol to issue red notices for 100 of its most-wanted officials. To date, the government says half of those on the list have returned, one way or another. 

Small wonder that Xi Jinping has said he wants the agency to “play an even more important role in global security governance”.
Since 2016 Interpol has been headed by Meng Hongwei, who is also China’s vice-minister of public security. 

That year alone China issued 612 red notices. 

The worry is that China may have misrepresented its reasons for seeking arrests abroad. 

Miles Kwok, also known as Guo Wengui, a businessman who fled China in 2015, stands accused of bribery. 

But it was only when he was poised to give an interview last summer in which he had threatened to expose the misdeeds of the ruling elite that China asked Interpol to help secure his arrest. 

When America refused to send him home, the Chinese government requested a second red notice, accusing Mr Kwok of rape.
China’s covert extraterritorial activity suggests that foreign governments are right to be cautious about deepening ties in law-enforcement. 

If nothing else, the fate of those who do return provides grounds for concern. 

Although few would shed any tears for corrupt tycoons or crooked officials, the chances of any of them getting a genuine opportunity to prove their innocence are all but zero. 

Nearly half of the repatriated officials who were subject to red notices have been sentenced to life in prison; the other half have not yet been tried. 

Chinese courts have an astonishingly high conviction rate. 

In 2016, the latest year for which figures are available, it was 99.9%.

The Manchurian Broadcaster

Voice of America fires three staff over explosive Guo Wengui interview
By Choi Chi-yuk

Voice of America’s Sasha Gong Xiaoxia (left) and Dong Fang are shown during the interview with Guo Wengui. 

Chinese fugitive Guo Wengui with Steve Bannon

Voice of America, a US government-funded broadcaster, has sacked three suspended staff members over their involvement in a live streaming interview with self-exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui half a year ago, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
The IFJ, a global federation of journalistic trade unions, has called on the international news source to explain the terminations.
Washington-based journalists Sasha Gong Xiaoxia and Dong Fang interviewed Beijing-wanted billionaire Guo, who is also known as Miles Kwok, at a location that was not disclosed for Guo’s protection on April 19.
During the live stream, Guo accused numerous top Chinese officials or their relatives, including former top graft buster, Wang Qishan, of taking huge bribes.
The interview, originally expected to last three hours, was abruptly halted. 

Five Voice of America staff members, including Gong and Dong Fang as well as Yang Chen, Bao Shen and Li Su, were ordered to take administrative leave with pay amid an investigation.
The IFJ said in a statement issued on Sunday that both Yang and Bao had resumed their work while the employment of Gong, Dong Fang and Li Su, a technician, had been terminated. 

The three staff members had "allegedly" violated certain regulations, including disobeying management’s orders and "failing to follow journalistic practices", according to the IFJ.
Gong denied the allegations and said she would fight her termination, according to the IFJ.
“They (Voice of America) could not tell me which order I had disobeyed,” Gong was quoted. 

“I don’t understand how I had not followed the journalistic practice.”

Exiled Chinese billionaire blasts kleptocracy running China, warns of spy infiltration in US

• China is being controlled by a small clique of crooked high-level officials.
• Chinese security officials earlier this year authorized an escalation of espionage efforts in the United States.
• Guo's earlier scheduled appearance at a Washington think tank was postponed due to heavy pressure by China.

By Dan Mangan

Billionaire businessman Guo Wengui speaks during an interview in New York City, April 30, 2017.
A Chinese billionaire in self-imposed exile blasted on Thursday a small clique of corrupt "kleptocrats" running China — as he also warned of a wave of Chinese spies being dispatched to the United States in recent months.
"What they're doing is against humanity," said Guo Wengui, during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, two days after a previously scheduled appearance at a think tank in the same city was postponed due to heavy pressure from the Chinese government.
"What the U.S. ought to do is take action, instead of just talking to the Chinese kleptocracy," Guo said through a translator.
"They are just a tiny group of Mafia, pure and simple," said Guo, a real-estate magnate also known as Miles Kwok, who lives in a $68 million apartment in New York City.
"I would like all the members of the Chinese Communist Party to wake up and say no to this ruling clique."
Guo said he was aware of multiple initiatives by that clique in China to increase the number of spies in the U.S. and "to weaken the United States, to bring about turmoil in the United States and to ... decimate the United States."
"These plans pose great threats to the American people and their property," Guo said.
Those efforts are "100 times, or even 1,000 times" as potentially damaging as the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Guo's appearance in Washington was just the latest in a recent flurry of controversies surrounding the real estate magnate, who fled to the United States in 2015 after learning a security official he had ties with was being targeted by an anticorruption campaign.
Guo has unloaded a barrage of allegations of corruption by people in the highest levels of China's ruling Communist Party, which include claims that the party's own head of anticorruption activities, Wang Qishan, has unclean hands. 

Wang's family secretly controls one of the largest conglomerates in China, the New York Times has reported.
In September, Guo applied for political asylum in the U.S. 

But he has kept on making scathing and salacious attacks on social media against his targets.
Last Saturday, Facebook reportedly blocked a profile with Guo's name and removed another page linked to him. 

Facebook said it took that action after confirming the pages included another person's identifiable personal information, in violation of the platform's terms of service.
Guo's targets haven't taken his claims lying down.
In April, the Voice of America, which is operated by the U.S. government, abruptly cut short an interview with Guo, and later put five of its own journalists on administrative leave in connection with the interview. 

The chief of VOA's Mandarin service told CNBC that Chinese authorities met with VOA's Beijing correspondent and asked that the interview with Guo be canceled.
Earlier this year, the Chinese government asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for Guo.

The Associated Press has reported that Chinese prosecutors are investigating Guo "for at least 19 major criminal cases," which included allegedly bribing intelligence officials, kidnapping, fraud and money laundering. 

In August, AP revealed that Chinese authorities have asked for another Interpol warrant for Guo, on a claim that he "raped" a 28-year-old former personal assistant.
This week representatives of a pro-China corporate investigative firm provided CNBC with a 12-page dossier on Guo detailing his use of social media to make "allegations against women and his perceived enemies," and the fact that he "has been subject to accusations of questionable business dealings and the defrauding of business partners."
The dossier from the firm, which has been retained by a number of clients around the world that have been targets of Guo, also noted "a series of defamation suits" filed in New York City against the billionaire since April.
The suits were filed by Caixin Media; Soho China, a real estate company; an affiliate of the major Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, and China's vice minister of housing and urban rural development.
Guo told The Wall Street Journal for a story published Tuesday that he has set up a $150 million legal war chest to fight the lawsuits.
"Nothing can stop me," Guo told the Journal.
But Guo was stopped hours later Tuesday by the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington.
The Hudson Institute told Guo around noon that day that it was postponing his planned appearance there on Wednesday, the Journal reported. 

Guo told the paper that the think tank told him his appearance was "poorly timed." 

CNBC has reached out for comment from the Hudson Institute.
So instead, Guo spoke to reporters Thursday at the National Press Club.
"You have caused quite a stir, not only in the United States but also in China," said Bill Gertz, senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon, who moderated the event.
Guo told reporters that he was jailed in China for 22 months after the government's 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square, whose efforts he supported with donations.
At around the same time, Guo said, "due to some kind of a trade dispute" that his brother became involved with, police shot and killed his younger brother, as his brother tried to shield Guo's wife from their bullets.
"The crime they gave me was so-called anti-revolutionary, and then they change it to obstruction of justice and fraud. They said I engaged in fraud and stole somebody's money," Guo said.
Years before, during the Cultural Revolution, Guo said his father was beaten badly after being sent into internal exile, "my brothers were injured physically ... and my mother had a nervous breakdown."
After his own release from jail, Guo returned to business, and began building luxury hotels, he said.
"From then on, I set myself a goal, which I had in my heart, that was to engage in revenge, not only for myself but for the whole of the Chinese people," Guo said. 

"For the injustices and the injuries and the deaths they have rendered to my younger brother, to my family members, to my brothers, and to my cousins, and to promote and bring about justice and equality to the whole country by overthrowing the existing system."
He said that after making $17 billion, his goal was "to engage in some kind of revolutionary activities."
That $17 billion, he said, is now "all frozen by the Chinese government."
"Since I came abroad, I have also made a lot of money," Guo said. 

"I have the best house, private aircraft, yacht, so as far as my personal welfare and personal needs are concerned, I have no other needs that I really desire."
"My only single goal is to change China," he said.

Billionaire Who Accused Top Chinese Officials of Corruption Asks U.S. for Asylum

By MICHAEL FORSYTHE

Guo Wengui, a billionaire property developer, is seeking asylum in the United States because his public charges against Chinese officials have made him “a political opponent of the Chinese regime,” his lawyer said. 

A billionaire property developer who has accused some of China’s most powerful officials of corruption has applied for political asylum in the United States, his lawyer said.
The billionaire, Guo Wengui, who is in the United States on a tourist visa that expires later this year, is seeking asylum status because his public charges against Chinese officials have made him “a political opponent of the Chinese regime,” Thomas Ragland, a Washington-based lawyer representing him, said in a telephone interview late Wednesday.
Asylum – even a pending asylum application — would give Mr. Guo more protection because he could stay in the United States while the application was being considered, a process that can take years, Mr. Ragland said.
“Asylum offers a level of protection that is different from having a visa status,” Mr. Ragland said. “Visas can be canceled or revoked.”
From his $68 million apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan, Mr. Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, has used Twitter and YouTube to publicize his claims that Wang Qishan, a member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee who oversees the ruling Communist Party’s own anticorruption efforts, and his family members secretly control one of China’s largest conglomerates.

His accusations made against the family of Wang’s immediate predecessor can be corroborated.

Wang Qishan, a member of China’s elite Politburo Standing Committee whose retirement status will be decided at a Communist Party meeting next month. Wang and his family secretly control one of China’s largest conglomerates.

Mr. Guo’s actions have earned the ire of the Chinese government. 

In April Beijing asked Interpol, the global police organization, to issue a global warrant for his arrest. He is also being sued for libel in United States courts by several Chinese individuals and companies.
The asylum application could present a diplomatic quandary for the Trump administration, which is seeking China’s help in isolating North Korea after it conducted a series of missile tests and underground nuclear tests. 

Mr. Guo is arguably China’s most-wanted man, and giving him asylum would almost certainly antagonize Beijing, which may interpret the move as tacit approval of Mr. Guo’s tactics to undermine China’s leadership.
Articles in China’s closely controlled news media have accused Mr. Guo of crimes including fraud, money laundering and rape. 

In April one of his associates, a former vice minister of state security, appeared in a televised confession in which he said Mr. Guo had bribed him.
Mr. Guo’s asylum application may be complicated by his claims that he has passports from many countries, including the United Arab Emirates, and is no longer a citizen of China. 

It is unclear why Mr. Guo could not go to another country where he has citizenship when his United States visa expires, though Mr. Ragland said that the United States might be the only country where Mr. Guo feels safe from the long arm of the Chinese state.
Mr. Guo’s asylum application, which Mr. Ragland said was received Wednesday by a government processing center in Vermont, comes ahead of an important Communist Party meeting next month that will determine whether Wang, who is past the customary retirement age, will be able to remain on the Politburo Standing Committee.
Mr. Guo’s accusations were seen by some analysts as weakening Wang’s position. 

But on Wednesday, Beijing sent a signal that Wang still enjoyed strong backing from his peers. 

Three of his fellow members of the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee, plus the top aide to Xi Jinping, attended a ceremony in Beijing with Wang to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of his father-in-law, a senior leader who died in 1994.

China turns to US courts in effort to silence exiled businessman

Guo Wengui’s accusations from abroad rattle Beijing political elite
By Emily Feng, Sherry Fei Ju and Lucy Hornby in Beijing

Guo Wengui: Beijing has entangled him in at least five lawsuits 
China has taken its fight against an exiled businessman who has stirred up a political hornets’ nest to the US courts, gambling on a legal drama to quell his damaging revelations.
Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, has levelled personal accusations against Wang Qishan, China’s powerful anti-corruption tsar, from his home in Manhattan. 

The gripping allegations have transfixed the Chinese public as elite factions jockey for influence in the ruling Communist party.
In response, Beijing has entangled Mr Guo in at least five lawsuits, marking an unprecedented engagement with the US judicial system. 

That could prove an expensive distraction for Mr Guo, who relies on Twitter and overseas Chinese media for free airtime.
“No one anticipated that lawsuits against Mr Kwok would come out in such scale,” said Tao Jingzhou, of Dechert, a law firm in Beijing. 

Chinese companies have been defendants in the US but rarely initiated a complaint in a US court, he said.
Many believe that Mr Guo is attempting to drive a wedge between Wang and Xi Jinping, China’s president. 

The party has countered by writing in Hong Kong media that Xi, Wang and Meng Jianzhu, the country’s security chief, are united against Mr Guo.
For the moment, attempts to silence him centre on New York courts. 

China has no extradition treaty with the US and Chinese agents desperate to repatriate him have not provided US law enforcement with sufficient evidence of any crimes committed, people with knowledge of the situation said.
HNA Group, the international conglomerate, announced late on Thursday that it had filed a defamation suit in a New York state court against Mr Guo, according to a court summons. 

The suit is in response to remarks Mr Guo made on his social media accounts.
Last week, journalists were offered unusual but limited access to a trial in China of Mr Guo’s former employees, as part of the effort to discredit him. 

They pleaded guilty to obtaining loans and foreign currency under false pretences.
On Friday morning, two employees were sentenced to two years in prison with three years of probation. 

A third employee was sentenced to two years and three months of imprisonment. 

Mr Guo's company, Pangu Investment Co, was fined Rmb245m ($36m).
China’s attempt to use its court system and jailhouse confessions to muzzle Mr Guo have been handicapped by a lack of credibility. 

During Xi’s tenure many Chinese lawyers who worked as independent defenders in civil rights cases have been jailed. 

The anti-corruption watchdog led by Wang functions without oversight, leading to complaints of false accusations, torture and even deaths in its custody.
Meanwhile, China’s supreme court president in January denounced “false western ideals like judicial independence”.
This week, nine Chinese companies filed a lawsuit in New York to recoup Rmb272m ($38.5m) in unpaid fees from the construction of Mr Guo’s Pangu Plaza near Beijing’s Olympic facilities nine years ago.
“We are only a small party in this lawsuit action, and we only went along like everybody else,” said one of the plaintiff companies. 

“We did not initiate the US court case nor did we play any active role in the process. We only provided the required documents to relevant parties.”
Their suit follows three others previously launched in New York: an $88m lawsuit from Hong Kong-based Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund over an unpaid loan and two defamation cases brought by Pan Shiyi, chairman of Beijing property developer Soho China, and Hu Shuli, chief editor of financial magazine Caixin.
Meanwhile, another woman named among Mr Guo’s stream of allegations has also threatened to sue.
"We have a total of Rmb28bn in debt disputes involving 145 companies. Why have only nine come forward? I like to fight in groups!” Mr Guo tweeted in response to the suits.
But he evaded representatives sent to his Manhattan apartment, said Kevin Tung, the nine plaintiffs’ New York-based lawyer. 

“I hope he settles,” he said. 

“But I don’t think this man has the personality to do a settlement.” 

What you need to know about China’s most wanted man

By Zheping Huang

Can't stop won't stop.

The Chinese government can’t seem to do anything about its most wanted man, who now lives in exile in the US.
Guo Wengui is not the first businessperson to have fled China, perhaps with secret information about the ruling elite. 

Previous fugitives, however, have either decided to stay silent and keep their whereabouts secret (paywall), or have been forcefully taken back to China before they can kick up too much of a fuss.
Guo is an outlier. 

Equipped with masterful social media skills, and protected by bodyguards (link in Chinese) in his Manhattan penthouse, Guo has been making serious accusations of corruption against China’s former and current officials. 

One of them, Wang Qishan, is widely considered the second-most powerful man in the nation.
The episode offers a good example of how the intricate ties between China’s rich and powerful can risk turning into a liability. 

If Guo is to be believed, China’s ruling Communist Party may be far more corrupt than the party is ready to ever publicly admit.

Who the heck is he?
Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, is a Chinese property tycoon who has been living overseas for more than two years. 

At the height of his career, Guo had a net worth of $2.6 billion, ranking 74th among China’s richest in 2014, according to the Hurun Report. 

One of his most well-known properties is the Pangu Plaza, a torch-shaped building close to Beijing’s Olympic stadium.

The 50-year-old billionaire first came to the spotlight during a corporate feud in late 2014. 

At the time Guo sought to acquire a large stake in Founder Securities, China’s sixth-largest brokerage, but squabbled over the terms with his former business partner Li You, who was the head of Founder’s state-owned parent.
The aborted business deal ended badly for both sides. 

In January 2015, Li was arrested by police on alleged corruption charges, and soon afterwards, Ma Jian, a former deputy spy chief who is reportedly a close ally to Guo, was also investigated for corruption.
In March 2015, Chinese financial news outlet Caixin published an investigative report (link in Chinese) detailing how Guo developed close ties with high-ranking Chinese officials including Ma to further his business interests. 

The report also revealed that in 2006 Guo secretly recorded a sex tape of a Beijing deputy mayor for not approving the Pangu project initially.
Guo denied that report and launched a personal attack on Caixin’s influential editor-in-chief Hu Shuli. 

In response, Caixin sued Guo for defamation.

What does he allege?
Since then, Guo has stayed quiet for the most part as he shuttled between Europe and the US—until recently. 

In the last few months he has taken to Twitter enthusiastically and granted several interviews with US-based publications, accusing former and current Chinese Communist Party officials of corruption.
“Striving for China’s true rule of law!” he says in his Twitter bio. 

“This is just the beginning!”
One of his latest allegations of corruption is against Wang Qishan, China’s top graft-buster who’s known to be a close ally of Xi Jinping. 

In a live interview with the Voice of America (VOA) last week, Guo claimed that deputy national police chief Fu Zhenhua, on behalf of Xi, had demanded he look into Wang’s nephew’s investment in Hainan Airlines—a very busy acquirer of travel-related assets around the world in the last few years. 

Guo said that Fu had made threats against his family to force him to cooperate. 

Guo said Fu told him that “Chairman Xi just uses (Wang), but doesn’t trust him.”
Guo also went after Wang’s predecessor, He Guoqiang, the former top disciplinary official before Xi came to office in 2012. 

In a March interview with Mirror Media Group, a Chinese-language news outlet based in Long Island, Guo claimed that He’s son He Jintao was the behind-the-scenes backer of Guo’s business rival Li You, the second-biggest shareholder in Founder Securities, who is now in jail.
The New York Times, citing corporate records and an interview with He’s relative, reported (paywall) that the He family did appear to control a stake in Founder through a series of shell companies.
Guo claims his assets in China were seized, and that his family members and former employees are being detained. 

He says he owns 11 passports, including ones from the European Union and the US, and that he hasn’t used any Chinese identification for more than two decades.

What does the Chinese government say?
China has asked Interpol, the international police organization, to issue a “red notice” to seek Guo’s arrest. 

Countries do not have to honor a red notice, which is not an international arrest warrant. 

In November, Interpol appointed a Chinese security official as its new chief.
Chinese authorities did not give reasons for the notice, which was issued just before Guo’s VOA interview. 

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified sources, that Guo is accused of giving about $9 million in bribes to Ma, the disgraced former spy-master.
Guo said in the VOA interview that he was in regular contact with FBI agents, and was not worried about being arrested.
VOA said Chinese officials had expressed concerns about Guo’s interview. 

The Chinese foreign ministry has threatened not to renew VOA’s correspondents’ visas in China in response to the interview. 

VOA abruptly ended the interview early, and later said in a statement that it was due to a “miscommunication.”
Meanwhile, China is publicly going after Guo. 

After the VOA interview, Ma, who has not gone on trial yet, appeared for the first time after his arrest in a 20-minute video on YouTube to confess that he had misused his power to help Guo gain business interests in return for gifts including cash and properties.
The Beijing News reported (link in Chinese), citing unidentified government sources, that two executives of Guo’s Beijing-based companies were arrested last week for bribery and fraud charges. The newspaper also revealed that Xiang Junbo—China’s insurance regulator who was recently arrested—helped Guo get loans that Guo later misappropriated to buy a Hong Kong property in 2014, when Xiang was still working at Agricultural Bank of China, one of the nation’s big-four state banks.
So he must be a big deal.
Guo’s fight against the party establishment comes on the eve of its major leadership reshuffle this fall, when Xi is slated to start his second five-year term.
In the past five years, Xi has netted thousands of allegedly corrupt officials in a seemingly never-ending, ruthless anti-graft campaign steered by his powerful ally Wang. 

Speculation is mounting that Xi is likely to break an unwritten rule on retirement age in the party to let 68-year-old Wang seek a second term. 

Guo’s claims against Wang would seriously damage the legitimacy of Xi’s anti-corruption efforts.
The Chinese Communist Party also hates uncertainty, and Guo’s very public crusade against it is exactly what the party does not need, especially ahead of major events. 

Guo said that in the next few weeks he plans (link in Chinese) to hold a tell-all press conference on China’s anti-corruption campaign, and said he has information on four specific officials including Wang Qishan.
At least for now, no one appears to be able to stop Guo from speaking out from his Manhattan home.

Can anyone stop him?
For a few brief moments, it seemed that Guo may have been silenced.
Twitter briefly suspended Guo’s account today (April 27). 

Almost all of his 103,000 followers had disappeared when the account was back up and running, but those followers were later restored. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A similar episode happened to Guo’s Facebook account last week. 

The account was restored after Guo complained about his suspension from Facebook on Twitter. Facebook said that the suspension was a mistake (paywall) due to the company’s automated systems, without elaborating.

The Exiled Chinese Billionaire With a Mar-a-Lago Membership

By Scott Cendrowski

Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok

If you missed the latest billionaire scandal in China, you could be forgiven.
The case of Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, the billionaire property developer of Beijing Zenith Holdings, has mostly been carried out in Chinese language sites and through Beijing's propaganda machine.
The only people to make sense of the disparate stories are keen observers of elite Chinese politics. Those include the English language newsletter writer Bill Bishop, who has chronicled the case over the last two days, and New York Times reporter Michael Forsythe.
Here's what is clear. 

It is always dangerous to be a billionaire in China, especially one in real estate. 

Local governments control the land, and graft almost always lurks behind the deals that turn real estate from public to private.
Guo made his money through real estate. 

He's lobbed corruption accusations at China's most powerful, and the government has returned the insults. 

This week China succeeded in getting Interpol to call for Guo's arrest.
The latest episode is a growing embarrassment for the Communist Party particularly because it questions whether Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign can truly take on the China Communist Party's endemic corruption. 

Guo's accusations of corruption climb to the highest level of Chinese politics.
Here's the basic rundown:
After accusing officials of corruption throughout his career—according to investigative reports in Chinese media—Guo has recently taken on a deputy minister of Public Security. 

Guo was scheduled to give a three-hour interview to Voice of America on Wednesday, during which he promised "a nuclear bomb of corruption allegations.”
But after an hour, the interview abruptly stopped. 

Chinese officials pressured Voice of America to cancel the interview, an official with the broadcaster told the New York Times.
Guo's staged his latest interviews from the U.S., where he arrived in 2015, reportedly after his ally, former spy chief Ma Jian, was detained in an anti-corruption case. 

In the U.S. he has joined Trump's Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago resort, a fact that could ratchet up China-U.S. diplomatic intrigue in his case.
Since then, Beijing has staged a counter attack. 

Stories discrediting Guo have flowed from Chinese state media outlets this week.
What follows now is unclear.
Guo appears to remain safe in the U.S. to send more accusations of corruption at Chinese officials, unlike Xiao Jianhua, a billionaire abducted by Chinese state security from Hong Kong across the Chinese border earlier this year. 

Xiao was known for helping China's powerful move their assets overseas, according to Willy Lam, a professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The latest drama is important in part because it involves high level officials. 

But it is also unfolding a few months before a once-every-five-years leadership change in the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, and it could change the calculus of filling five of the seven opening seats.

Rogue Nation

Greater Corruption in China? A Billionaire Has Evidence
By Michael Forsythe
Guo Wengui has criticized the effectiveness of the Communist Party’s anti-corruption campaign.
It happens in Russia — occasionally.
An oligarch, made fabulously wealthy through the privatization of state assets, breaks ranks, becoming a critic of President Vladimir V. Putin.
China was different.
Its growing ranks of billionaires often owe their fortunes to the good graces of the Communist Party and its leading families.
But the firsthand knowledge that the country’s tycoons might have of the complex shareholding ties that serve to enrich the political elite had stayed secret.
That changed this year.
In two rambling interviews with a New York-based media company lasting more than four hours, Guo Wengui, a real estate magnate, described what he said was a ferocious struggle that culminated two years ago in the collapse of a business deal pitting him against relatives of a retired top Communist Party official, He Guoqiang.
Since then, Mr. Guo has lived abroad, and is a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In going public with his charges, Mr. Guo demonstrated just how dangerous a loose-lipped billionaire can be to China’s Communist Party.
The party still strives to cultivate an image of selfless service to the nation, with state-run news media repeatedly emphasizing that no official is immune to Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive, now in its fifth year.
If Mr. Guo is to be believed, Xi, when he assumed leadership of the Communist Party in November 2012, may have faced a far more serious corruption problem than has been publicly disclosed, touching not only the departing chief of the country’s security forces but perhaps also the top official in charge of rooting out graft in the party’s own ranks, Mr. He.
Both were members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the elite body that wields supreme power in China.
“If you are Xi Jinping and you are deciding to go after corruption, can you take them on all at once?” asked Andrew Wedeman, a professor of political science at Georgia State University who studies corruption in Chinese politics.

Zhou Yongkang, the former head of the security forces, in court in 2015.
The former head of the security forces, Zhou Yongkang, was prosecuted on graft charges and is now serving a life sentence in prison. 

But there is no report that He or members of his family have been prosecuted. 

To Mr. Guo, that demonstrates the weakness of the corruption crackdown: Among the elite, the campaign touches only those who are already on the losing side of factional power struggles.
Mr. Guo explained in a March 8 videotaped interview with Mirror Media Group, a Chinese-language news company based on Long Island, how He’s son He Jintao was the “boss” of the second-largest shareholder in Founder Securities, a company in which Mr. Guo was seeking to acquire a large stake. 

He Jintao concealed his role through a proxy, according to Mr. Guo.
That deal soured when Mr. Guo tried, without success, to name directors to Founder Securities’ board and became locked in a dispute with his former business partner, Li You, who was the chief executive of the brokerage’s state-owned parent, according to a report by Caixin, a Chinese news company.
Mr. Guo, using turns of phrase that wouldn’t be out of place in “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos,” said He Jintao was working against him.
“To be honest, if I could publish evidence about you, He Jintao, I promise that in 24 hours, 10 million people will take to the streets and will eat you alive,” Mr. Guo told Mirror Media.
Mr. Guo, who also goes by the name Miles Kwok, did not offer any proof of wrongdoing by the He family. 

But for all his bluster, there is some documentation to support his assertion that the family had a financial stake in Founder Securities.
In 2015, New York Times reporters working in Beijing, Hong Kong and the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu mapped out the financial network of He Guoqiang’s family, examining shareholding records and verifying relationships by interviewing a member of the family. 

Those documents and interviews show that the family did appear to control, indirectly through a series of shell companies, a stake in Founder Securities, which has a joint venture in China with Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank.
He Guoqiang, left, with Xi Jinping, center, and Jia Qinglin, a top official, during the Communist Party Congress in 2012.

Founder Securities is one of China’s biggest brokerages, with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion. 

Unusual for a securities company, it is based in the south-central province of Hunan, He Guoqiang’s native province. 

Its second-biggest shareholder at the time of its 2011 initial public offering was a company called Lide Technology Development.
Until at least mid-2014, Chinese company records show, Lide was controlled by companies tied to the He family. 

A member of the family identified one of the ultimate shareholders, Zhang Xiuqin, as He Jintao’s maternal aunt. 

Lide owns stakes in property, medical and financial companies across China worth more than $600 million, corporate records show.
Credit Suisse Founder, the joint venture, was begun in 2008, the first full year that He Guoqiang was on the Politburo Standing Committee, and it allowed the Swiss bank entry, through the venture, to China’s domestic investment banking market. 

Founder Securities retained majority control, with a two-thirds stake.
According to Bloomberg data, the venture underwrote one of its first initial public offerings in August 2010 — of a company called Hangzhou Shunwang Technology. 

One of this company’s directors was Liao Ying, whose name and biography on the company’s prospectus match those of He Jintao’s wife.
Moreover, at the time of the I.P.O., Hangzhou Shunwang’s third-biggest shareholder, owning almost 10 percent, was a company controlled by the He family and ultimately owned by two of its business associates, according to a review of Chinese corporate records. 

Credit Suisse Founder was also an adviser for Founder Securities’ own I.P.O. in 2011.
A spokeswoman for Credit Suisse in Hong Kong had no comment. 

Founder Securities and Hangzhou Shunwang did not respond to questions submitted via fax and email. 

He Jintao did not respond to a request for an interview made through his Beijing-based company, Womei Investment.
With a flourish of bluster and in the third person, Mr. Guo expressed just how heated the conflict was with the younger Mr. He, telling him, via a video interview viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, that more disclosures could come should their business interests clash again.
“Guo Wengui is from the grass roots, born as a farmer and not afraid of death,” Mr. Guo said. 

“If you do it again, then I would have no choice and will fire a cannon to you. I don’t want to war against you, but He Jintao, you had better watch carefully what you say and what you do, including with your wealth — you’ll be responsible for it.”