Is guanxi (connections) all it is cracked up to be? First, Pearl Oriental Holdings and now, it seems, Robert Chua's China entertainment TV channel have found it is perhaps not.
Both set store by their mainland connections and both have now come unstuck at the hands of mainland investors - with both threatening recourse in the courts.
Robert Chua's 'no sex, no violence, no news' Mandarin channel was designed as much as possible to appeal to Beijing's sense of what good TV should be about. Yet now the deal has gone sour, Beijing seems happy to sit back and watch the channel go under.
Yesterday, in front of a packed house of reporters, a slightly red-faced Mr Chua attempted to reinterpret his particular guanxi.
'Guanxi goes in different ways. Some based on the power of companies and their position. All I can say is that I maintain good guanxi in terms of TV,' Mr Chua said.
He and his company appear to have been tripped up not just by believing their own hype about guanxi, but that of others too - particularly that of Mr Kan Shu-tsang, the de facto leader of the mainland consortium which allegedly pulled out of its US$34.3 million offer for an 80 per cent share of CETV.