THE CALL from China came in the early morning. Desmond Shum, a former tycoon now living in the West, heard the voice of his ex-wife, Duan Weihong, for the first time in four years. Ms Duan vanished in Beijing in September 2017, shortly after Communist Party anti-corruption investigators came for a patron of hers, a young member of the Politburo once seen as a successor to the supreme leader, President Xi Jinping.The call from Ms Duan, who also used the English name Whitney, was followed quickly by a second. Both contained a warning. She urged her ex-husband to halt the …
