Every few years on the Vancouver-China beat I stumble on a story so bizarre, impactful & lurid it barely seems possible to have gone untold. The tale of Li Bolun, dubbed “the greatest adventurer of Chinese media” by People’s Daily, is one such tale... scmp.com/magazines/post… 
In the early 2000s Li was one of the most powerful figures in Chinese showbiz, prez of the media/entertainment arm of CITIC, the Chinese govt’s investment behemoth, one of the world's biggest state-owned firms. A monster, now w/ US$1 trillion+ in assets... citic.com/en/
He made movies, TV shows, invested in talent & beauty pageants, magazines, sports events and more. He was the CCP’s very own media mogul, a made man, a protégé of the all-powerful Wang Jun, CITIC group’s princeling chairman...
But then Li did something unexpected, until now unreported. He quietly bought a majority stake in Canadian newspaper the Global Chinese Press. That’s right. Never mind CCP influence: in 2004, the CCP's media mogul bought out a prominent Vancouver newspaper. And no one noticed...
GCP is a free but important paper in the Chinese community. Its stands are everywhere. Sure, there have long been reports of pro-Beijing inclinations. But until I saw the shares in court files I'd have laughed at the idea it was actually half owned by a unit of the CCP's CITIC...
Then Li’s story goes horribly, fatally wrong...
The shares were transferred into Li’s personal name. Despite his role as the CCP’s very own multimedia mogul, Li wanted to immigrant to Canada as an entrepreneur. Court documents indicate he used GCP to do just that, although he kept living and working in Beijing...
Then the story gets ugly. In 2009, police in China arrested Li for misappropriation & forgery – in effect, trying to cheat the Chinese Communist Party. That never goes well. The charges made no mention of GCP or his Canadian foray. But the downfall of Li Bolun had begun...
He was convicted & jailed. Very quietly. No headlines. After a 16-month sentence, Li began fighting tooth & nail with his Canadian biz partners over his GCP investment. The BC courts so far have largely sided with Li; the litigation continues (that’s how I found all this out)...
But on July 29, 2015, Li was arrested again. No corporate offence this time. Chinese prosecutors said Li was seized in a Beijing meth house. Li was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment and fined 2,000 yuan after pleading guilty to “allowing others to take drugs”...
He never completed his sentence. January 5, 2016, he was found dead in prison, at the age of 61...
Not a single headline mourned the man once likened by state media to Rupert Murdoch & Sumner Redstone. Citic Culture has also quietly vanished, its websites wiped clean, its HK unit dissolved. Citic staff say they have never even heard of it...
Even Li’s glowing, 4000-word profile in People’s Daily vanished in June, a few days after I contacted Citic Group about him. It is as if Li Bolun, the “greatest adventurer” of Chinese media, never existed at all. scmp.com/magazines/post…
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