Red Roulette by Desmond Shum (Scribner) ~Janet Brown

When Desmond Shum was six years old, a Shanghai bureaucrat decided, after a cursory glance, that he would become a swimmer. This decision sparked Shum's subsequent success, with his athletic prowess giving him access to an education in Hong Kong and in the U.S. It also gave him a personal motto, forged in childhood and carrying him through a life of perilous achievement: "Things may seem insurmountable but you'll always get out of the pool." And he always does.

In spite of his years in the States and in Hong Kong, Shum's roots are in the People's Republic of China and when the investment firm that he works for transfers him to Beijing, he feels as if he's coming home. But even before his arrival in China's capitol, the way his native country does business has shaken his naivete, when he discovers that Heineken avoids Chinese import duties by being smuggled on a Chinese warship. Shum has never learned how to clinch a deal with a discreet presentation of envelopes filled with bribes. He can't even keep up at banquets by drinking huge amounts of Moutai. He's in pursuit of a career while his Chinese colleagues are in it for the money.

Shum flounders until he meets Duan Zong, "The Lady Chairman Whitney Duan," who heads a company that's negotiating a merger with Shum's.

Whitney quickly sees the advantage of linking her Chinese business acumen with Shum's Western education and knowledge of finance. She becomes his mentor or, as Shum puts it, the Henry Higgins to Shum's Eliza Doolittle, and the two of them form a pragmatic, unromantic coupledom and partnership that’s propelled by business.

Whitney has become close to a woman she calls Auntie Zhang, someone who needs to approve her new relationship before she and Shum can be married. Only after the approval has been given does Shum learn "Auntie Zhang" is the wife of the man who would soon become the premier of China, Wen Jiabao.

Clearly Whitney envisions having the sort of marriage that her mentor enjoys. Auntie Zhang is the business head of the household while her husband achieves political success. Following this example, Whitney exercises her financial genius in her own name as Shum serves as a guide to the Western world of business transactions. 

However Whitney doesn't count on her husband's rapid learning curve or his prevailing good luck. When Shum saves the life of a local Chinese leader on a trip to the U.S., he takes a leading role in developing the Beijing Airport Cargo Terminal, thanks in part to that official's gratitude. When he and Whitney decide to build Beijing's most luxurious hotel, it's Shum's knowledge and Westernized taste that makes this a success. 

However their sizable fortune is held in Whitney's name and when a loan of thirty million dollars goes unpaid by one of Shum's Hong Kong business associates, Whitney refuses to release the money that would save the deal. Their marriage, based upon their business partnership. begins to weaken--and then founders into disaster when Whitney decides to take responsibility for the dubious gains of Auntie Zhang and her husband.

Red Roulette makes Succession look like Sesame Street. The political machinations are headspinning, with missteps resulting in executions and disappearances. Wealth is power and an essential fulcrum, until it no longer is. This is a book that needs to be studied, a primer to China in this century, written by a man who swam in the deep end, yet was able to "get out of the pool."