“The China Hustle” (2017) is a documentary that examines how Chinese companies got listed on the US stock market and misrepresented their financial health thus attracting US investment firms’ attention. These investment firms were looking for a rebound after the 2007-2008 financial crisis but are fooled twice. Once the truth is uncovered, will the financial sector and government learn from their mistakes? Bwahahahaha! No!
Jed Rothstein wrote, directed, and narrated “The China Hustle,” which makes it a performative documentary. When a filmmaker inserts themselves into the narrative, the documentary becomes participatory. An expository documentary has narration that informs the viewer. A performative documentary persuades viewers by using personal stories to evoke an emotional response and combining various documentary styles.
Rothstein divides “The China Hustle” into sections. He introduces the feature’s star, GeoInvesting’s cofounder Dan David, and references how Rothstein met David. He starts at the beginning of the story in 2008 to explain why investment firms were so eager to look for the next big thing. Rothstein presents the major actors who promoted the Chinese companies on both coasts, Roth Capital in California, and Rodman & Renshaw in New York. Then the documentary gives a variety of lessons in “reverse mortgages,” which explains how Chinese companies were able to get listed, and “short selling,” which explains how US investment firms are making money while sounding the alarm against this danger. The documentary warns viewers that Chinese companies face no repercussions for misrepresenting the value of their company to get money, and no gatekeepers exist except the self-appointed ones. Rothstein waits until late in the film to explain why it is so risky to expose these companies, especially for Chinese nationals such as Kun Huang, who investigated Silvercorp. Then the film captures David’s crusade for reform, but he is more Cassandra than Paul Revere before showing the real-world consequences to the latest impending financial apocalypse.
Not all filmmakers have access to The Big Short’s Margot Robbie to educate audiences and keep them entertained. Rothstein uses slick graphics, animation, shots of beautiful city skylines, video footage from surveillance, archival video, and interviews with talking heads, experts, and people with first-hand experience. Maybe it is absorbing on the big screen, but it looked busy.
Rothstein decides to create momentum by framing two interviewees as the Jimmy Stewart figure and the villain. “The China Hustle” vouches for David by depicting David’s backstory, showing him socializing with his family and friends and chronicling his journey to Capitol Hill. David tears up when he recalls his humble beginnings in Detroit. “There are no good guys in this story, including me.” Isn’t that what the hero says? Dan is ordinary enough to be relatable, but expert enough to be considered an authority. It is a tricky balance to strike, but Rothstein succeeds in making this successful, savvy, professional investor seem like the little guy in contrast to Roth Capital and Rodman & Renshaw. David’s credibility stems from his willingness to admit that he may have been snookered and needs to do better. Instead of being deliberately ignorant like his colleagues to continue to financially benefit from others’ shadiness, he decides to embrace the truth and expose it. Rothstein notes that Carson Block pioneers this move but elevates David. “I am somebody who bets against fraud,” David proclaims whereas Block is more reserved in his crusade. There are other crusaders, but David is the most memorable.
“The China Hustle” has a lot of villains, but casts the main turncoat as Wesley Clark. The camera lingers on him after he stops talking and captures his twitching face. When he loses his composure and leaves mid-interview, Rothstein lingers on the money shot. What is better than getting a former US General to squirm on camera as he bats away implicit allegations of turning on his country for profit?
While alarm is warranted, and “The China Hustle” does insert enough clips of experts stating that American companies would behave similarly to Chinese companies and commit fraud if there were no consequences, Rothstein should have highlighted earlier why more Chinese nationals did not participate in the film. The optics are not considered enough, and the film does not age well. Having a lot of Americans critique China sounds cringeworthy, especially considering the pandemic that started a couple of years after the documentary was originally released in theaters. We know how easy it can be to demonize people and how that could result in violence even if it is unintentional. The criticism sounds xenophobic in its characterization of Chinese civil society and is too quixotic about American capitalism. Also Huang’s employers congratulate themselves for supporting Huang after the Chinese government persecuted him. They made money on Huang’s life. I hope that they paid him adequately since their wealth would not exist without his suffering otherwise it unintentionally reeks of The Color Purple’s Miss Millie, “I’ve always been good to you people.”
One scene disrupted David’s image as his Biblical namesake facing Goliath. He begins to deride politicians, so I got curious about whom David supports. He is a Republican post 2016, and “The China Hustle” was released in 2018 during his unsuccessful campaign to represent Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District. A cursory search shows that David tweets against Obama and Presidon’t, but it does not negate the opportunism. When someone shows you who they are……? Would he play crusading Cassandra without the payday and fame? Still he resonates when he exclaims, “I don’t want to hear how the world works anymore.”
Rothstein seems less politically cynical than David because “The China Hustle” gives Senator Elizabeth Warren a lot of screen time during his Mr. David Goes to Washington segment. When the movie opens, it plays Presidential audio dating back to Nixon lauding the shared ideals and goals of China. Rodman & Renshaw uses political figures as part of its smoke and figures to create credibility for shady financial prospects. In contrast Senator Warren homed in on reality and moves to protect, not reassure with propaganda.
If documentaries could be classified according to a fictional genre, “The China Hustle” would be a horror film teasing a sequel now starring Ali Baba as the next Michael Myers. The music is somber, and the closing scenes signal that none of the earlier referenced bad actors have been harmed. Rothstein closes on a familiar note: be scared, be very scared.
While I enjoyed “The China Hustle,” I would not consider it a must-see documentary. If you do decide to watch it, you may conclude that the main difference with American companies is ramifications, but considering that the SEC has few resources to investigate and enforce the law, is it? I am heavily invested in the stock market and doing modestly well, but I would be fooling myself if I thought that other companies were that fundamentally different from their Chinese counterparts since greed is a human desire, not rooted in any single country’s soil.