72 Chinese Billionaires Suffered Unnatural Deaths in Last 8 Years | Hacker News Reader

72 Chinese Billionaires Suffered Unnatural Deaths in Last 8 Years

blogs.forbes.com

39 pointsmrb12 comments

Whichever entities are behind these conjectured assasinations (criminal gangs or the government) and whatever purpose they fulfill (retaliation or attempts to take control of the fortunes), this environment is certainly not favorable to healthy economic development of China.

It reminds me of a point that someone was making about competition on the worldwide market from Russian companies: because their government has a history of wanting to take control of successful companies, they eventually interfere so much with their business, or they end up running them so badly, that foreigners need not worry from Russian competition.

Edit: so the source article appears to be talking about people with 100M+ yuan, or 15M dollars. There are 60k Chinese with 100M+ yuan. Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-04/13/content_123144... So these death rates don't look so unusual.

Note that in the article comments it is pointed out that it is not clear if the article refers to billionaires in yuan or in dollars. In the former case, there would be many more billionaires and the death stats not quite so unusual.

It's worse than that: he cites billionaires in dollars for the total number, while the source for the number killed is billionaires in yuan. These are actually 72 out of 60,000 [1], not 115. Flagged for being terrible "journalism".

[1] http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=2011...

OK, this is ridiculous. It appears the original article wans't even talking about yuan billionaires, but instead, yuan hundred millionaires ($15m). Creative headlines are one thing, but manufacturing facts to get traffic is almost blacklist material.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/72-millionaires-die-young-in-C...

Right. Linked to from Forbes' front page, I note, which I assume is an editorial decision.

According to the linked article, it's not even yuan billionaires: http://www.hindustantimes.com/72-millionaires-die-young-in-C...

> The numbers of millionaires may be rising steeply in China, but their life span appears to be shorter than average Chinese as studies showed 72 of them died young in the last eight years. The Chinese multimillionaires, whose personal assets exceeded 100 million yuan ($15.51 million), have died of unnatural causes or passed away at a young age since 2003, according to a report.

In the comments the author adds that this article was made to poke fun at China "statistics".

"Hi Luisa: My analysis? Ha! This is purely a case of ambiguous information in / ambiguous information out. Any apples to apples comparison—whether directly or by way of illustration—is purely accidental. In truth, I had a few minutes between meetings and wanted to poke a little fun at China “statistics,” which often leave much unsaid. Besides, I wanted a chance to use the word “nefarious” in a post (as in “death by nefarious means”) and you just made my wish come true. Thanks"

14 of whom were executed: unbelievable.

Why is that unbelievable or even surprising?

I believe https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Financial_tra... will make Govt less dependent on Corporate taxes.

There can be only one.

Come on, that is BS statistics.

How many were rich through corruption (a highly stressful undertaking resulting in health problems/suicide/execution)

weak correlation at best...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com