The China Hustle Movie Script

At some point in a China-based company, that accountability ends.

And it ends at the ocean.

This is one of the first things that Dan ever told me.

In China, it's not illegal to steal from foreign investors.

I couldn't believe the SEC would allow companies to list on U.S. markets, if it really had no way to police them.

So I found an employee of the Chinese state financial news agency, who was willing to take a risk to confirm the truth.

My name is Summer. I am a financial journalist for the state regulators.

(in Mandarin) If a company releases false information about its financial report in the U.S. market, Chinese domestic regulatory authorities have no power to punish it.

I will surely be punished by law if I make counterfeit products in China, theoretically speaking.

If I go abroad, if I lie to foreign investors, Chinese authorities can do nothing to me.

Bottom line is, the Chinese government and the U.S. government, on most levels, don't work that well together.

You can't compel somebody that has stolen millions and millions of dollars from U.S. investors to come here from China.

You can't compel them to testify.

You can't even find them.

Forget about the average person who thinks that their broker or the SEC will protect them.

Even someone like Crocker Coulson, who worked inside the system, couldn't find out what was really going on with these Chinese companies.

You're in an alternate universe.

There's kind of this arms race to do the simplest things.

You can't even look at the bank statement.

You can't even go into the local bank and ask them.

A lot of times, the manager of the local bank, will actually reprogram the books of the bank to make it look like the books of his client are better than they are.

Anytime you have a country like China, where information is not easily obtained, any society like that is a much greater risk.

In the United States, we can go directly to a firm and we can subpoena those records.

To get records out of China is significantly more difficult, if not impossible.

If you wanted to set out to be a criminal, probably the best place to be a criminal is someplace with no cops, and that was China.