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China’s Richest Man & Gome Founder Arrested

Huang GuangyuOne of the big news this week that many Chinese are talking about on China’s BBS forums is Huang Guangyu (黄光裕) being arrested and investigated for manipulating the stock market. He is the founder and boss of China’s number one electrical appliances retailer, Gome (国美电器), which has over 500 stores throughout China.

He is also one of China’s richest men. In fact, in 2008 he was the #1 richest man with about 43 billion RMB (or ~6.3 billion USD).

A short English description of Huang’s history from BusinessWeek:

Huang’s is a typical rags-to-riches China tale. He and his brother began hawking radios and other electrical components from a roadside stall after he moved to Beijing as a teenager. He eventually built his business into the country’s largest retail chain, which he listed in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the company’s largest shareholder with 34%. Last October, Gome became the first Chinese retailer to team up with Dell to sell the U.S. company’s computers in its stores.

A Gome electrical appliance store in China.

Comments on Tianya (1 & 2):

The key problem/question—who to bribe?

Now I understand why wealthy people want to emigrant, if I was a wealthy person, I would also want to emigrate abroad to be a first-class citizen~! [x8]

How many businessmen in China are actually pure and innocent? Are there 10%?

If you do not break the law, you cannot earn any money, and will spend the rest of your life eating porridge. If you want to eat fish, then you can only go under the laws and regulations, and after you’re finished earning you enter prison. What can you do! With the present domestic situation, I simply do not believe those wealthy people are all clean. The clean ones absolutely have no money!

Real or fake? This would be a big deal, the Suning boss would be laughing, haha. [Suning is another home appliances and electronics retailer.]

Actually, this is the perfect example of “fame portends trouble for men just as fattening does for pigs!”
With the current financial crisis, arresting one means getting a bunch of money! [This means that arresting a rich person allows the government to get some more money from them].

Government and business have already become a cancer to Chinese society.

The Hurun Institute [that compiles the yearly list of China’s richest people] has already become a pig-slaughtering house, whoever is fat is whoever gets killed.
Zhou Zhengyi [a rich Shanghainese businessman] is second.

What? If they go bankrupt, who do I go to for after-sales service for my electric water heater!

The effect on everyone’s electronics retail will be pretty big.
[Even] China’s richest [can be arrested].
My god!

The country lacks money~~~[so it will “tax” this rich person]

China’s businessmen and wealthy people, which of them can survive being investigated?

I am very afraid that if something happens, appliance prices will increase in the future!

Everything is not as simple as it appears on the surface to us~~~

Ha! The emperor has slaughtered a pig for the upcoming Lunar New Year!

The gap between rich and poor is too serious, find someone who is especially out of line, drag him out, and chop him…
Are you all satisfied now, and will stop complaining?

No matter what, I still await a good result for Huang Guangyu. Besides, he is also human, and coming this far was not easy.

Suddenly remembered the images of Phoenix Television interviewing Lai Changxing [another rich Chinese businessman], remembered Lai Changxing having said that if you just properly investigate China’s company businessmen, who of them would not have a problem? China’s current state is just like this. Or perhaps this is really China’s state!

Yet another part of the 4 trillion [China’s economic stimulus plan] has been taken care of!
Eagerly awaiting the next one!

With regards to the ordinary common people, Gome, Suning, none must collapse.
Otherwise one company will become a monopoly and the ordinary common people will lose.

It is said the most important reason Huang Guangyu was investigated is because he is currently transferring large amounts of wealth to America.

“It is said” should not be said so easily…the reason for this investigation was because of participating in his brother’s company “ST金泰” share manipulation…as Huang Guangyu, it is not easy to become an expert businessman…not even graduating from junior high but coming out and leading a nomadic lifestyle. (even though later he went to a famous university for a refresher course).

Legends are not all clean…but you are still my idol!!

It looks like no matter how good you run a business, no matter how many employment and society’s problems you have resolved, you are still working for the government.

Who is the current world’s most lovable people? Soldiers? Peasants? Workers? Public servants?
No, it is entrepreneurs! They created wealth for society, they live within the crevices of an unsound system, surviving like mice, and truly not easy. Yet another sacrifice!
I am not involved in entrepreneurship, but I understand entrepreneurs.

Out of 10 successful business men, 9 of them have sides that cannot be exposed under the sun, and Huang Guangyu is the same.
The problem is: Although the reason for arresting him is definitely appropriate, have we considered that these truths long ago existed, so why make the arrest now? Something to think about…

Every one of China’s dynasties, once their finances are in deficit, have two simple solutions: First find the ordinary common people and ask them for money. If the ordinary common people are so poor that you can no longer scrape anything from them, then you find the rich merchants and big customers and ask for money and raid their homes.

Brother Hu [China President Hu Jintao] said money is tight right now, so Little Huang [Gome’s Huang Guangyu] must quickly share some.

How come this bastard not change nationalities earlier? Then they could not arrest him even if they wanted to.
Learn from the movie circle’s Gong Li [who recently emigrated to Singapore], how wonderful!
Having money means nothing. The big fat pig is still the one who gets slaughtered.

I am certain it is not [just] a stock issue.
This bullshit is too common on China’s stock market.

This kind of wealthy merchant celebrity, one look and it is obvious there is an unfair distribution of benefits and he will be “handled”…
So no matter how rich the merchant is, he is still a businessman, and the government is the government…
So those with money, it is time to flee, who knows if you are next…

These bastard media, Huang Guangyu was arrested at the beginning of the month. The media knew this, and I do not know what shit the Huang family used to seal the mouth of the media, but they just would not report it! A few days ago, Baidu also censored news like this, even snapshots [cache?] were not viewable.

I like Huang Guangyu, because he is one of the few real “grassroots” rich and powerful people. Even though he is like a wolf, this is a personality one must have in this half capitalist, half socialist society.
If they want to investigate, there is not a single rich and powerful person who can bear being investigated…in China’s rich and powerful circles, he is still a very important symbol [as someone who became rich by himself]…otherwise all that would be left of China’s rich and powerful circles would be crown princes [people who did not become rich by themselves].

Actually, I rather admire him, it is not easy to mess around to this degree.

I also want to be investigated.
Only thing is I cannot get on the list [of rich people].
My life is too dull.

What do you think?

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Written by Fauna

Fauna is a mysterious young Shanghainese girl who lives in the only place a Shanghainese person would ever want to live: Shanghai. In mid-2008, she started chinaSMACK to combine her hobby of browsing Chinese internet forums with her goal of improving her English. Through her tireless translation of popular Chinese internet news and phenomenon, her English has apparently gotten dramatically better. At least, reading and writing-wise. Unfortunately, she's still not confident enough to have written this bio, about herself, by herself.

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