Black China

The Chinese government has aggressively gone after elite officials with illegal overseas assets in its battle against black money.

- Ananth Krishnan

Lai Changxing could well be described as China’s Vijay Mallya. For years, he topped the list of runaway tycoons pursued by the Chinese government. Lai, who presided over a business empire that spanned cars, cigarettes and real estate, was accused of illegal dealings worth billions of dollars. In 1999, he fled to Canada. Beijing created a special department of more than one thousand investigators just to pursue him and recover his assets. When China finally secured his extradition 12 years later, after assuring Canada he wouldn’t be executed, the Communist Party broadcast his return to Chinese soil live on state television, showing the stout, bespectacled businessman being escorted off an Air Canada aircraft by two towering policemen.

Like India, China has been waging a war on black money, one that intensified after President Xi Jinping took over in 2012. Yet it has been a different battle—focusing on repatriating economic fugitives and recovering their assets rather than on illegal cash holdings at home. It was later expanded into a domestic campaign to target select high-profile officials.

TWO BLACK MONEY BATTLES