Editor's Note: Just after The Wire published this story, Desmond Shum said in an interview with NPR that Whitney Duan, his ex-wife who he had not heard from in four years, called to press him not to go ahead with publication of his book, Red Roulette. She had disappeared and had likely been arrested by the state on corruption charges. Their 12-year-old son had not heard from his mother in four years, until the call over the weekend. Desmond suspects she is still in detention but is being pressured by the Chinese government to stop publication of his book. Here is Desmond's story.
On September 5, 2017, Whitney Duan, age 50, disappeared from the streets of Beijing. She was last seen the day before in her sprawling office at Genesis Beijing, a development project she and I had built that was worth more than $2.5 billion. There, cocooned in a work space that visitors reached after running a gauntlet of security guards, meticulously landscaped gardens, and a dozen varieties of Italian ma
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