The China Contract

A fugitive flees Kuwait in the boot of a car, with documents the Chinese government wants buried. If he is caught, he will disappear. What he carries rewrites what we thought we knew about 1MDB – the financial scandal that shook the world. Billions of dollars were stolen and laundered from Malaysia’s state investment fund in a scandal that brought down its government and put its Prime Minister in prison. Investigative journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown first broke the story and has spent the last decade following the money. What she finds is damning. From Hollywood excess and superyachts to Goldman Sachs boardrooms, and from political upheaval in the Middle East to the corridors of Washington DC, the trail leads to China – to unbridled state power that buys influence, subverts governments and makes the truth and people vanish. At its heart is an unspoken China contract: a web of financial and political arrangements that protects those involved, silences scrutiny and extends Beijing's reach far beyond Malaysia's borders. The China Contract is a real-life thriller and an urgent warning that corruption and state power are insidiously reshaping the global order.