Sleuths for Hire

Beijing likes to play the part of Big Brother. But suddenly China's private investigators are posing a challenge to the police state.

By Brook Larmer

It was the corpse that nearly fooled Yang Hai. The 40-year-old Beijing investigator had cracked dozens of insurance scams over the years, most following the same simple pattern. A Chinese citizen takes out a large life-insurance policy with an American company, his family falsely declares him dead and then tries to collect the cash. More than once, Yang has solved these cases simply by calling the family and having the "dead" man answer the phone. But how could he explain away the corpse that accompanied a claim in Fujian province? Drawing on nine years of police experience, Yang uncovered the grisly truth. The man had paid a poor family several hundred dollars to let him remove their terminally ill relative from a local clinic. He then checked the dying stranger into a larger hospital under his own name-a seemingly surefire ticket to collecting USD300,000.

Yang didn't receive any accolades from the Chinese police for busting the body snatcher, but an American company did pay him a cool USD500 a day for his work. That's because Yang is not a cop anymore. He's a private investigator, part of a fast-growing, freewheeling industry that is challenging the boundaries of China's old police state. Beijing, reluctant to give up its role as Big Brother, has officially banned private detective agencies. But as China's economy and society have opened up, several hundred firms specializing in investigations have emerged all over the country. These private agencies dig up dirt on everything from cheating spouses and pirated foreign goods to insurance scams and corrupt government officials, services China's security bureaus cannot be bothered-or trusted-to provide. "Many people in the police and judiciary oppose these agencies", Says He Jiayong, a law professor at People's University in Beijing. "But the demand for their services is so great, the government can't stop them".

Foreign companies are fueling part of the demand. Two decades of rapid economic growth, capped by the country's entry into the World Trade Organization, have attracted a fold of multinationals-and they pay top dollar to protect their investments. Beijing can't afford to alienate foreign investors, so it has quietly allowed private agencies to carry out fraud investigations, background checks on local partners, even raids on factories producing counterfeit goods. Some of these are big international outfits such as Pinderton and Kroll. But the majority are well-connected local firms like Yang's Steele Business Investigation Center. (Yang avoids the taboo word "detective", even though the company's name betrays his admiration for the dashing TV detective Remington Steele.) Half of Yang's clients are foreign firms, and many of them come to him through his membership in World Association of Detectives, whose certificate he hangs proudly in his Beijing office. "The government can't do these investigation", Yang says, "and the foreign companies wouldn't want them to anyway."

The biggest business for China's gumshoes, however, is deceits of the heart. With incomes rising and social controls falling-the "snooping grannies" of the old Communist Part watch committees are a dying breed-marital infidelity has never been so popular. Nor has divorce. Emboldened by tow new laws, women are now fighting back against cheating husbands. (One law allows a spouse to claim all family assets in a divorce if her partner is considered "at fault"; the other allows plaintiffs, not just judges and prosecutors to gather and present their own evidence in civil cases.) What is the surest way to nail a wayward spouse? Hire a private eye like Wei Wujun, the chain-smoking former Army intelligence officer who is known as "the mistress killer." A dead ringer for his hero, Mao Zedong, Wei uses detective techniques inspired by old Hollywood movies: laying traps, manning stakeouts and managing a vast network of informers working in banks, hotels and police departments. But Wei doesn't come cheap. With business so brisk he turns away nine of every 10 cases and now charges USD1,000 an hour.

Not everybody is thrilled with these enterprising detectives. Some cops and judges, uneasy about China's gradual shift from an inquisitorial to an adversarial legal system, accuse them of invading citizens' privacy, intruding on their turf and ---- worse yet- exposing embarrassing secrets. Four years ago, Wei's investigation of a local mayor in Sichuan province who was using state funds to support his mistress led to the official's dismissal. When judges don't accept his evidence in divorce cases. Wei turns his sights on the judges themselves. "I don't do anything illegal, and I've never been arrested," insists Wei, whose father was a top military official during Mao's regime. "But if a judge doesn't accept my evidence, then I'll investigate them and find his weak points." It could be considered a shady way to operate, but Wei insists it is justifiable and very effective. "A lot of people in government are scared of me," he says, with a laugh.

The greatest fear comes when private detectives start policing the government. Meng Guanggang, a gruff ex-police chief from the northeastern city of Shenyang, opened his private-detective agency in 1993 ---- the same year such agencies were banned. His caseload, now more than 100 a year, mostly involves tracking down debt cheats and philandering husbands. But the fastest-growing part of his business is government corruption. Local citizens hired him to probe the alleged misuse of disaster-relief funds after massive flooding last summer. At the behest of a local political leader, Meng recently tracked down a factory boss and political delegate accused of embezzling money. The woman was protected by local police, so Meng held her, against her will, in his office before handing her over to the provincial police. Was this a kidnapping? Meng has a clear conscience. "When people are doing bad things", he says, "You have to use special means."

China's Private Detectives are Digging up Dirt on everything from Cheating Spouses to the Country's Corrupt Officials. Beijing may want to regulate this murky new industry, but it is caught in a bind. Not only is the government running dangerously low on public trust and police manpower, but because Beijing forbids private-detective agencies, the hundreds of new firms register as "consultancies" or "legal services" ---- or they don't bother to register at all. Few experts think private eyes will be welcomed soon, for that would be an admission that Beijing does not have a monopoly on power. But Wei, "the mistress killer", nurses grand hopes. "Maybe after a few years in the WTO we will be allowed to register as private detectives", says Wei. "Then I will establish a school, because there will be a huge number of people wanting to become private detectives, and I'm the best person to teach them." For now, however, Wei has to be content with a bustling business in broken hearts and a Web site that boasts of his dream: "Wei Wujun, Private Detective".