Huang Guangyu, the richest man in China, went on trial last week in Beijing. The founder of home electronics chain Gome was brought up on charges of bribery, money laundering, and insider trading. The dragnet in the investigation leading up to the trial has already widened, and has implicated a number of high-ranking cadres in the Ministry of Public Security's white-collar crimes division. In this edition of Sinica, we discuss the perils of wealth, and what Huang's trial means for rule of law in China. We also examine China's dilemma over soaring property prices, and Beijing's sharp new policies to curb speculation. Do they portend the collapse of the real estate bubble?

Joining host Kaiser Kuo this week are Gady Epstein, Beijing bureau chief for Forbes magazine, and Sinica regulars Bill Bishop and Will Moss. Bill is a tech entrepreneur in Beijing who blogs regularly on politics and economic issues at Sinocism.com. Will is a public relations expert in China and the force behind the popular Imagethief.com.

If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to give us your take on things either in the comment section, or by writing us at sinica@popupchinese.com. And remember, to subscribe to the Sinica show through RSS, just open up iTunes, click on the "Advanced" menu and select "Subscribe to Podcast". When prompted, copy the URL http://popupchinese.com/feeds/custom/sinica into the box. Those of you who'd like to download this mp3 directly from our site can also grab it as a standalone mp3 file. Enjoy!
badwisdom7
 said on
May 1, 2010
Thanks, I've listened to a few now and enjoyed them. Keep up the good work!
orbital
 said on
May 1, 2010
Good as usual but a bit long with two discussions, and the section on the property tax felt clipped at the end as you tried to cram in the ending. Maybe you'd get better mileage going into more depth on a single topic than trying to cram two into each podcast.

user18
 said on
May 2, 2010
The two discussions/topics format leads to some interesting headers where I initially try to puzzle out connections that don't actually exist!
Sinica
 said on
May 3, 2010
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, this one ran a bit long. For next week we're doing multiple angles on a single topic -- China's soft power. We'll discuss the Expo, China's English-language news broadcasters and papers, maybe talk a bit about China in Africa... should be a good one. Guests are Evan Osnos from The New Yorker, Gady Epstein from Forbes, and Jeremy Goldkorn!
janet
 said on
May 4, 2010
Useful context for observers trying to understand the climate for and against corruption among industrial titans. 1) The curse of making the Forbes Richest list. Tackling corruption is always a question of, where do we start? 2) The likely truth that Rio Tinto's foreign passport holders were nabbed as they came into the scope of an investigation of domestic steel traders, not targeted from the outset because they were from a foreign firm.

Footnote - the actress on Forbes 50 richest list taken down for tax evasion in 2002 was Liu Xiaoqing. China's own Martha Stewart story - she rose again after her year in prison :)

Freescania
 said on
June 23, 2010
Wasn't there mention of a link to a harvard roundtable in this? Would certainly appreciate it.

Cheers
Mark Lesson Studied