Nice Hiring, Dear Leader

As

moments of glory go, Yang Bin's was exceedingly short. The Chinese centimillionaire tapdanced into the international spotlight two weeks ago upon being named Chief Executive of a weird new North Korean free-trade zone. But before you could say "axis of evil," Yang got knee-capped by his motherland. Before dawn on Oct. 4, Chinese police knocked at his residence in Shenyang and summoned him for questioning. Authorities have since filed a "case for criminal activity" against him, according to the official China News Service. The charges are unclear, but Yang, a flower-seed tycoon worth an estimated $900 million, recently acknowledged publicly that he owed the Chinese government some $1.2 million in taxes. Tax evasion by China's fat cats is a national scandal, and Beijing is keen to nail some high-profile deadbeats.

Given Yang's newfound notoriety, he fits the bill. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il selected the 39-year-old entrepreneur to spearhead an experiment in social and economic engineering in the town of Sinuiju on the border with China. Yang was to be Chief Executive of a free-trade zone with its own laws and elections. The project is meant to lure industry to the destitute communist country, helping it join the modern world and possibly get off U.S. President George W. Bush's hit list. China's close ties to North Korea make Yang's predicament all the more unexpected. Joseph Cheng, political science professor at City University of Hong Kong, speculates that "Beijing is not happy with North Korea for not fully consulting them on the new economic zone."

Questions are also swirling around Yang's Euro-Asia Agricultural (Holdings), his flagship company, which is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Trading in its shares was halted Sept. 30 at the request of the company and it later came to light that Yang had raised money by selling nearly 82 million shares last month for a few cents each, dropping his stake to 49%. Lee Jong-suk, a China watcher at Sejong Institute, a Seoul think tank, says Beijing may have been forced to act quickly before Yang's untidy affairs made him an international diplomatic problem. So what happens now? Wang Huizhong, a colleague of Yang's in the Sinuiju project office, insists everything "is still proceeding as planned." But it's a fair bet that the flower king's brief reign as chief of North Korea's special economic zone is coming to an end.