Daily Lessons from Life 19 February 2011 - Vietnamese woman linked to downfall of China's top officials

"Sat, Feb 19, 2011 AsiaOne - Vietnamese woman linked to downfall of China's top officials

A Vietnamese refugee-turned-billionaire has been linked to the downfall of some of China's most powerful figures.

The story of Ms Li Wei, 48, has been making headlines in China. Li was born in Vietnam with a mixed French-Vietnamese background. At the age of seven she was brought to Honghe county in China's southern Yunnan province along the Sino-Vietnamese border as a refugee searching for a better life.

She began her career peddling tobacco products, before marrying a top official at the local tobacco bureau.

Influential Chinese business magazine Caijing ran a 14-page feature on how Ms Li had used her husband's networks to get close to top officials in Yunnan, China, before moving on to acquire more powerful friends across the nation.

Li is described as being an attractive, fair-skinned woman, "with an alluring dress sense".

According to media reports, Ms Li managed to gain access to former Yunnan governor Li Jiating, who became her lover. She helped him get resident status for his son in Hong Kong in exchange for tobacco export quotas. The governor narrowly escaped the death sentence in 2003 for taking more than S$39 million in bribes.

Another prime catch was Chen Tonghai, former chairman of the state-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec). She also became the mistress of Du Shichen, Qingdao's former Communist Party secretary.

Investigations by Chinese authorities showed that Li boosted her assets to close to ten billion Chinese yuan (S$1.94b) with extensive operations in tobacco, real estate, petroleum, securities and advertising.

Ms Li was detained for tax evasion in 2006 and had most of her assets confiscated, but was released soon after and is now living in Hong Kong.

However, many of her lovers that she implicated remain in detention, while some have been sentenced to death on corruption and misdemeanour charges."

Strange that the news headline said: Vietnamese women who she is clearly a Chinese citizen by the time she is old enough to do what she had done!

Lessons for me are:

1. all her efforts come to nought, or maybe not if she had stashed away a few millions here and there before being hauled to justice and served her jail term. Why bothered in the 1st place? Bacause I can? or Why bother about what will happen later when you can enjoy the life of the noble and rich folks?;

2. were those men corrupt before they met her or she met them because they were corrupted? Does it really matter? The Chinese saying said: you will think of evil desires when you have sufficient food to eat and clothes to keep you warm. Maybe to be rich is a curse if you do not know how to handle wealth, especially the ill-gotten ones!;

3. by running her story, I hope the influential business magazine, CaiJing, is spreading the morale of the story that: ill gotten wealth is temperary. It is not if there is retribution or, more correctly, consequences, of one's actions but WHEN. There will always be a cause and effect relation. Who we are today is due to our own awareness, diligence, determination and taking actions. We are not who we are just because we are!! Get it?

May she lives happy ever after and that she has a meaningful ending when the end comes.