A Chinese magazine fights a battle royal
CHINESE media are not known for stirring up trouble. Their coverage of politics is almost uniformly tame. Business coverage is sometimes harder-hitting, but journalists still shy away from taking on powerful companies. One exception is Caixin, a financial magazine. It has a reputation for well-reported exposés, which have earned its editor, Hu Shuli, the widely used moniker of China’s “most dangerous woman”. Over the years she has made plenty of enemies. But until recently, she had never faced two prominent foes in public at the same time.
The first is Anbang, which in recent years has grown at warp speed to become one of China’s biggest insurers. Caixin has published three separate cover articles since 2014 examining the company’s success. Like many analysts, it has pointed to the risks involved in Anbang’s reliance on the sale of short-term insurance products to fund its long-term investments. The magazine has also...Continue reading