Guo Wengui James Estrin | The New York Times

The biggest political story in China this year isn't in Beijing. It isn't even in China. It's centered at a $68 million apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. That's where Guo Wengui, a billionaire in self-imposed exile, has hurled political grenades at the Chinese Communist Party for months, accusing senior leaders of graft using Twitter as his loudspeaker. He escalated his attack by claiming that members of the family of China's second most powerful official, who oversees the country's anticorruption effort, secretly own a large stake in a major Chinese conglomerate. The Chinese government responded by unleashing the state-controlled media to enumerate Mr. Guo's alleged frauds, and asking Interpol to put out a global warrant for his arrest. More from New York Times:

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China detains activist who worked at manufacturer of Ivanka Trump shoes But then something unexpected happened. China stood down. The state media campaign against him tapered off. In mid-May, Mr. Guo announced on Twitter that his wife and daughter — previously barred from leaving China — had been allowed to visit him in New York. "We need to root out some of the robbers of this country," Mr. Guo, referring to China, told two New York Times reporters this month at his apartment. To emphasize the point, he wrote it out in Chinese in a notebook. "We are against using corruption to root out corruption." Mr. Guo's allegations are unproved, and some of his claims have been outlandish and easily debunked. Yet amid his barrage of charges about China's powerful and wealthy are claims that have turned out to be accurate. And the government's treatment of Mr. Guo, whose former political patron was one of China's highest-ranking intelligence officials, suggests he may be taken seriously, perhaps even supported, by some officials in Beijing. Mr. Guo's most recent claims have reverberated across China and fed unease on Wall Street about doing business there. The assertions, if substantiated, could upend politics in China, the world's second-biggest economy, possibly driving a wedge between President Xi Jinping and Wang Qishan, the anticorruption czar. Mr. Wang, the focus of Mr. Guo's allegations, has close ties to Wall Street, with enormous influence over China's financial sector. Mr. Guo's assertions come just months before a Communist Party meeting that will decide whether Mr. Wang, recently the focus of speculation that he may become China's next prime minister, will remain on the party's elite Politburo Standing Committee. Mr. Guo's Twitter broadsides have continued, and his ability to stare down the world's most powerful authoritarian nation has underscored the mystery, in China and abroad, about how he acquired his billions, what he knows and who, if anyone, is backing him.

Ruthless, or a hero?

Mr. Guo's ambitions, like his personality, are big and sometimes baffling. He says he has a plan to exorcise graft from the party, bring rule of law to China and put ties with America on a stable track by ending decades of Chinese skulduggery on trade. At other times, he explains his corruption allegations as an act of vengeance for a long-ago death. He could just be a man feeling pressure, his assets frozen in China, and bad investments and lawsuits chipping away at his fortune. No one better represents the marriage of the party and money than Mr. Guo, known as Miles Kwok outside China, who parlayed relationships with some of China's most powerful officials to help build a global portfolio including hotels, office buildings and securities brokerage firms. Show Mr. Guo a spreadsheet listing the shareholders of the giant Chinese company HNA, which has been buying up businesses in the West, and he'll rattle off the names of the prominent families that he claims really control their stakes. Ask him to map out family trees for those names, the key to tracking ill-gotten wealth in China, and he'll do it from memory, down to the sisters, the cousins and the aunts. "The allegations with regard to HNA simply aren't true," a spokesperson for HNA said. Over a decade ago, the Chinese Communist Party welcomed businessmen into its ranks. In turn, those tycoons helped make the sons and daughters of the revolution rich while helping the country show spectacular growth rates. Now, armed with information, one of them has strayed. "These people have power and influence and knowledge," said William C. Kirby, a professor at Harvard Business School. "Many of them are easily controlled. But others go off the reservation." Mr. Guo has gone farther than anyone else. When the party retaliated against him, the state-controlled Beijing News reported that he was suspected of obtaining a "fraudulent loan" worth 3.2 billion renminbi ($466 million) from one state-owned bank. Another publication, Caixin, referring to documents from Mr. Wang's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said that Mr. Guo had arranged for $299 million of client funds at a securities firm he controlled to be illegally transferred out of it. The government's most potent weapon was the release in April of a videotaped confession by Ma Jian, a former spymaster and political patron to Mr. Guo. He said he had accepted more than $8.7 million in gifts from Mr. Guo in exchange for favors, including frequent interventions with officials to short-circuit any obstacles to his property projects. "Guo Wengui, to ingratiate himself with me, to thank me, and to maintain his relationship with me, gave me a huge amount of benefits," Mr. Ma said in the video. Mr. Guo did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Guo's presence in the United States poses a dilemma for the Trump administration, which is seeking China's cooperation to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions. In recent years Mr. Guo provided Washington with insights into Chinese politics through his visits with embassy officials in Beijing, according to a former senior administration official. Mr. Guo, who is a member of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump's private Palm Beach club, is eager to get close to the powerful. On Tuesday, he wrote on Twitter that he flew to Washington for meetings at the Trump International Hotel. He contributed to charitable work by Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, who calls him a friend. When the Times reporters visited Mr. Guo's apartment at the Sherry-Netherland hotel in late April, he stepped away to take a phone call in another room, with the speakerphone on. His assistant explained that a top aide to Mr. Xi was on the line. The implication was obvious: Despite his unprecedented public tirades against some top officials, Mr. Guo was communicating with the one who matters most. As with many of Mr. Guo's claims, it wasn't possible to verify who was on the other end of the call, but the episode was fully in keeping with Mr. Guo's showman personality. That flair for the dramatic is typical of him, said one longtime acquaintance who was present when he took calls from Mr. Ma, the former intelligence official. Many Chinese dissidents and journalists working outside the state media umbrella cast Mr. Guo as a hero for his outspoken criticism. Some who know him, though, say that he can be ruthless. A Beijing vice mayor who once stood in the way of his securing property rights for an elaborate plaza at the 2008 Olympic Games park was ousted and given a suspended death sentence for bribery after Mr. Guo obtained a tape showing the official having sex with a mistress. Mr. Guo also takes aim at news organizations that write unflattering articles about him. In 2015, Caixin wrote an investigative article about his business and political connections. In response, Mr. Guo accused its editor of having an affair and a child with his former business partner. Caixin is suing Mr. Guo for libel. His public attacks against the leadership of the country he fled two years ago began in January. Through Twitter, and in a televised interview last month on Voice of America, Mr. Guo said a top police official, at the behest of Mr. Xi, had asked him several years ago to look into Mr. Wang's family finances. When the Chinese government eased up on its attacks against Mr. Guo, the about-face suggested that the Communist Party's top leadership may not agree on how to deal with him, according to Victor Shih, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies finance and politics in China. "If the party were unified in opposing Guo Wengui, his family would have had much harsher treatment," he said.

Seeking revenge