第12节：美国福布斯杂志对王刚的专访(3)

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　　Since Forbes' first China rich list in 1999, Sichuanese tycoon Mou
Qizhong, actress Liu Xiaoqing, orchid king Yang Bin, Shanghai developer
Zhou Zhengyi, entrepreneur Tang Wanxin and investment boss Zhang Rongkun
have been sentenced to prison for crimes ranging from tax evasion to fraud
to stock manipulation to bribery. Now Gome founder Wong Kwong Yu, second-richest
on our list last year, is under investigation for stock manipulation.

　　What was their real crime, though? Wang would argue that the only
difference between the jailed and the free is who is lucky enough to keep
the favor of the government. All wealthy capitalists in China share a
"terrible history" of corruption, he says, without which "they wouldn't
be where they are today."

　　To root out all the capitalist criminals, Wang suggests, the Communist
Party would have to root out itself. And the party needs the wealthy class
it helped create, to make the economy go and stay in power. The party
can sacrifice a few of the rich; the only question is which few.

　　"Before, it was Mou Qizhong, today there's Wong Kwong Yu," Wang says.
"Tomorrow, who will it be? God only knows."

　　By the end of "The Curse of Forbes," our anti-hero Feng Shi, a Beijing
real estate magnate, goes to prison after helping his love, Jiang Qing,
flee the country. Wang playfully suggests that readers might see in Feng
and Jiang the real-life Beijing property tycoons (and Forbes rich listers)
Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin the chairman and CEO, respectively, of SOHO China.

　　"I have no way of knowing what's going to happen to Pan Shiyi and
Zhang Xin, if the same thing might not happen to them," says Wang, who
doesn't know the couple and makes no specific claim against them other
than that they are wealthy. "In an environment like China, they really
have to be careful."

　　Pan and Zhang may have lost much of their paper fortune in the stock
market-SOHO's shares are down 70% from their fall 2007 peak-but they seem
to have no reason to worry that the government will suddenly decide that
their gains were ill-gotten. When approached at their offices in Beijing
Thursday, they professed bemusement, not fear.

　　"He'll say what he has to say, but the truth is that we don't live
in fear," Zhang says. "Everyone's a criminal? Is that what you're saying?
That's just not true. Simply not true. To say that every rich person in
China is a criminal, how can that be true?"

　　It can't be true, but that doesn't mean anyone in China is safe from
the curse of Forbes.

　　　　　　　　

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