18. David Barboza on investigating the hidden wealth of Chinese elites

This week on KickBack: Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent David Barboza (Twitter: @DavidBarboza2). The interview begins with a deep dive into David’s famous investigation into the vast wealth of the Chinese elite. You can read the NYT articles in the Archive here: https://tinyurl.com/ygh8xhz9. David outlines the challenges and unexpected breaks in investigating such highly sensitive topics while being tracked by the government, involving a strict “no phone call” policy, as well as the very real dangers he and his faced in pursuing the story. David outlines the reasons why even though the original article merely describes the amassing wealth was met with extensive attempts to prevents its publication. The explanation shows that having extensive wealth is often seen as a sign of corruption, as historically allegations of corruption spurred the famous 1989 Tiananmen square demonstrations (see https://tinyurl.com/y5ck7vr3). David shares insights into how the system of dealings among the elites works and how each year 200,000 public officials are brought down for corruption. David provides a history of how the norms around business activities of political leaders and their families changed since the end of the 1980s, how hidden ownership and plausible deniability from the sides of Western companies plays a role. In the last part of the interview, Matthew and David discuss the developments since the publication of the seminal investigation and how the anti-corruption efforts by Xi Jingping differ from other anti-corruption efforts.