Desmond Shum

Desmond Shum (b. November, 1968) is a Hong Kong businessman and author of memoir Red Roulette (2021). He was married to Chinese billionaire Duan Weihong.

Life
Desmond Shum was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong. He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is a graduate of the joint-EMBA program of Northwestern University (US) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

After graduating from college in the U.S., Shum returned to China in 1995 to work in private equity. He met businesswoman Duan Weihong in 2001, and married her in 2004. Along with Duan, Shum developed high-profile real-estate projects, including the Beijing Airport Cargo Terminal, the largest air cargo logistics facility in China, and the Bulgari Hotel, Beijing. In addition, starting in the early 2000s, he was an early pioneer of philanthropy in China, gifting extensively both domestically and internationally.

Shum and Duan divorced in 2015; Shum left China the same year.

Red Roulette
In 2021, Shum published his memoir Red Roulette, which tells his experience as an entrepreneur who rose to the highest realms of power and money in China and whose wife was disappeared. He describes the widespread and systemic corruption that permeates the Chinese Communist Party’s relationship with private business. In the book Shum confesses to marching against Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014 but switching sides in 2019. Shum credits his co-fellow at Aspen Institute, Bill Browder, and his book “Red Notice” as inspirations.