He saw China's open door but it's closed to him

In 1981, amid the cold war, only a person of remarkable audacity, perhaps even hubris, would suggest that communist China would one day 'go capitalist'.

Steven Cheung Ng-sheong (pictured), self-assured and daring, fitted the bill perfectly. At the time, few agreed with the Hong Kong-born, US-educated academic's theory. Some called it wildly improbable. Cheung was already a respected economist in the 1980s, but his stature grew with China's GDP as his outlandish theory became conventional wisdom.

But the man who first predicted China's opening door can himself no longer cross the threshold into the larger world. He's a fugitive, hiding in plain sight on the mainland, on the run from US authorities who indicted him for tax evasion and fraud in 2003. At 74, Cheung still defies the odds, but he's fighting for his reputation, his assets and his freedom. In academia and in life, Cheung has always pushed the boundaries, and as a fugitive, he's employed every legal strategy at his disposal to protect what he believes is his.

Cheung's first six decades were years of steady achievement. Born in 1935 in Hong Kong, he moved to the US in his twenties, and eventually became a US citizen. After earning a PhD in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, Cheung was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in political economy at the University of Chicago in 1967.

There, he embraced the Chicago school of economics, falling in with a cadre of prominent economists and future Nobel laureates. Some thought Cheung, too, would one day be honoured as the first Chinese economist to win the coveted prize.

He took a post at the University of Washington in 1969, settled for more than a decade, built a consulting business, got married, raised two children, and eventually divorced. He moved back to Hong Kong as head of the University of Hong Kong's school of economics and finance in 1982. He married Linda Su Ching Ling, known in the US as Linda Su Cheung, who took over running his business in Washington.

In Hong Kong, Cheung was an academic celebrity, and a force in public policy. To this day, his economics works are mandatory reading for economics students in Hong Kong. But it all began to unravel in 2003, when he became the target of twin inquiries - the first for alleged tax evasion and fraud relating to income from a business in Hong Kong which was not declared in the US. Cheung's US citizenship makes him liable for tax on all income earned, anywhere in the world. He and his wife were indicted and ordered to appear in a US court, but they fled to the mainland.