But the August exposé of the company appeared in a magazine that has gotten more than its share of scoops embarrassing to the government and powerful businessmen - and happens to be published in China. Last November Caijing (Business and Finance Review) disclosed that executives from China’s ten fledgling fund management firms had met in the saunas of Shanghai’s massage parlors to rig share prices.
The woman behind this audacious financial journalism is editor Hu Shuli, 48, who directs a staff of young writers. They’re “more idealistic” than older journalists, she says, “because they are very new.” Caijing’s owner, the Securities Exchange Executive Council, a privately owned financial information company set up by overseas-Chinese students with Wall Street experience, has staunchly backed Hu.
Beijing has responded to Hu’s muckraking. “We knew that if we asked the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission if we could publish the [fund] article, they would say no,” recalls Hu. “But we thought we should do something to pressure them. They were too tolerant of market abuses.” The CSRC’s subsequent investigation found fraud at some firms. (The toothpaste maker is also being investigated.)
Forced, ironically, by Communist officials to become a journalist after university, Hu was bitterly disappointed. “Back then,” she says, “intellectuals sneered at ‘the prostitutes of the party.’” But her grandfather, a onetime journalist, told her, “You’ll have a chance to change China.” She certainly has.
