Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption and Vengeance in Today's China
Author: Desmond Shum
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages:320
Price: Rs 699
This is a racy, jagged narrative, of China’s political elite through the noughties and the sleaze that surrounds them. Known as the “red aristocracy” — indolent families of the revolutionary immortals of 1949 — they manoeuvre to retain their cocoon of privilege, simultaneously profiting from the globalising forces of private enterprise unleashed by Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 reforms and reinforced in 1992 to counter the residual reactionary forces responsible for the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
Desmond Shum, the author, and Whitney Duan are