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Detained Red Roulette billionaire Duan Weihong resurfaces in China
- The businesswoman previously under investigation for her ties to disgraced Politburo member Sun Zhengcai has made a number of public appearances
- Duan’s ex-husband wrote about the couple’s experiences building their fortunes in China
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Yuanyue Dangin Beijing
Duan Weihong, a one-time billionaire and the ex-wife of UK-based author Desmond Shum, has reappeared in public, signalling that Chinese authorities may have ended an investigation into her links to a former Politburo member.
Duan was detained in 2018 for her association with Sun Zhengcai, a former rising political star and once the youngest member of the Communist Party’s inner circle.
Sun was party secretary of the southwestern municipality of Chongqing in September 2017 when he was removed from his post.
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In his 2021 book Red Roulette, Shum wrote about the couple’s business dealings with Communist Party officials in Shunyi, home to Beijing Capital International Airport, when Sun was the district’s party boss.
Duan had not been seen in public in five years but on May 12, she visited a nursing home in Nanjing in the eastern province of Jiangsu, according to the home’s WeChat account.
It was the 56-year-old’s first known public appearance on the mainland since 2018.
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