China Speakers Bureau: Huang Guangyu, not enough of a politician

Rupert Hoogewerf by Fantake via Flickr

Tycoon Huang Guangyu, founder of the successful electronics chain Gome, got convicted to 14 years of imprisonment for fraudulent activities, the final end of the man who used to be China's richest. For the BBC China's rich list producer Rupert Hoogewerf explains why Huang could not survive in China's competitive landscape. Hoogewerf's Hurun Rich list was the first to name Huang China's richest man.

The BBC:

[Rupert Hoogewerf] says that although the entrepreneur was a brilliant businessmen he wasn't a good enough politician.
"Huang Guangyu was quite strange in so far as he didn't really cultivate his political contacts assiduously," he says.
"You find that at the very top of the Chinese political establishment there are quite a number of different factions. He started cultivating faction A, and faction B got jealous and took him down.".
..Mr Hoogewerf says that confirms what entrepreneurs he's spoken to say - that he had been "sailing too close to the wind".
"They say he shouldn't have been doing so overtly what he was doing," he says. "He was considered to be living what was considered to be quite a high risk business life in that respect."
Huang was accused of organising illegal transactions - converting Chinese yuan into Hong Kong dollars and insider trading in connection with huge purchases of technology stocks.

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Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your conference? Do get in touch.