'Unlucky guy' tasked with buying China's aircraft carrier: Xu Zengping
Xu Zengping opens up about the clandestine operation to buy the Liaoning and unfinished business
It was a stealth operation like no other in China - even the highest echelons of political power were kept in the dark.
The only sign, if anybody had been looking, emerged in April, 1997, just a few months before Hong Kong's return to China. It was then that Hong Kong-based businessman Xu Zengping, best known for owning a Palace of Versailles-style home on The Peak, opened an unassuming office in three rented suites of Beijing's Grand Hotel.
To the outside world, the sole purpose of the office, with its sweeping views of the Forbidden City, was to organise a stunt on the Yellow River to mark the handover.
But inside, Xu's staff were coordinating one of the biggest covert deals in the military's history - the mission to buy an unfinished Soviet aircraft carrier from Ukraine and deliver it to China.
Xu, a former captain of the Guangzhou Military Command basketball team, said he had been persuaded over the course of several talks to take on the challenge by the then-deputy commander of the PLA Navy, vice-admiral He Pengfei.
"He told me that it was a once-in-a-century opportunity for China to buy a new carrier," Xu told the South China Morning Post in an exclusive interview. Two other Hong Kong businessmen had turned down the request, leaving Xu as the only man standing.