The China Hustle (2017) Reviews

• Investigative critque loses focus

  jazfro2018-04-01

  The documentary highlights a little-known scam on the US stockmarket: the fraudulent sale of so-called "high growth" Chinese stocks through reverse takeovers of so-called shell companies. In itself that story would have been worthy of consideration. However, the producers and director have elected to weave this into a critical narrative of capitalism and the US economic institutions which distracts from the main story. One of the highlights of the movie is when they document how little US banks, regulators, stockbrokers, investors, etc. knew about China in the first place. This story was not so much about the corruption or weakness of US institutions against the alleged malevolence of scheming Chinese (and American) stock-pushers, but about the ignorance of Americans about the rest of the world. I'm holding my breath about the sequel to come about the next wave of sham investments about India, Africa, or another place Americans know little about.

• Informative and revealing how scams never cease

  londonmapper2018-05-14

  An excellent movie to watch. While the film does make some ridiculous generalisations ("there is no rule of law in China"), it is extremely revealing how nondescript Chinese companies that Chinese investors would not have touched with a barge pole were sold as "the next hot thing" to unsuspecting US based investors. Of course, they could have done some homework and only invested in the 210 massive stable Chinese companies that are listed in the Hong Kong stock exchange or the 40 largest private companies like BYD listed in HKEx, greed seems to have got the better of them. In that case, retired people are no different from wall street bankers, except that the former tend to lose all they have while the latter get richer with 1 in 100 going to jail for seven years. The documentary features excellent interviews with the wayer who represented these firms Mitchell Nussbaum, whistleblower Dan David (who is likable but at times emerges looking like a wannabe Michael Blurry from The Big Short) and Retd. general Wesley Clark who spoke at many of "investment seminars" held from 2008 to 2016 by the lead firm that sold those c#@ppy stocks and is the focus of the film (Roth Capital). An excellent useful use of 2 hours of your life :)

• Unforking Believable

  The_Boxing_Cat2018-04-05

  NOTHING China does surprises me. This documentary put a lot of people in the hot seat- as it should. The only way to beat them is to expose them. Keep up the good fight! It's downright criminal how they robbed people. How is this not like robbing a bank? I definitely recommend this. It should be mandatory in our schools. Z3

• Highly Recommended

  emperoryad2018-04-04

  Excellent Movie! Do a search on this movie and see the excellent reviews from various Financial sites such as Forbes, MarketWatch, etc. Very good drama and this is really what is going on, more people need to know about this. It hasn't yet received the notoriety of or its not mainstream knowledge like the Madoff scandal but this is probably a bigger fraud and mess. Interesting how all this works.

• Interesting and Informative

  mrtimpson-676192018-04-06

  Interesting Documentary. Worth watching. Seems like the "China Hustle" will keep happening for a while. Muddy Waters Research from this movie has an interesting report on CIFS on their website and is currently short CIFS. I'm curious to see what happens to that company and the stock.