De ondergang van een Chinese zonnekoning

In a 2010 speech before a packed ballroom of university students in Sydney, Shi Zhengrong, founder of Chinese solar-panel maker Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, listed the people who had been important in his rise to fame and riches. Two were of particular note: Yang Weize and Wang Rong, senior Communist Party officials from the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi.

A decade earlier, Shi had been research director of a solar energy firm, a spin-off from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he attended graduate school. The adopted son of a poor Chinese couple, Shi had become an Australian citizen living a comfortable life. "I wasn't really thinking seriously of leaving," he once told Fortune magazine.