LIU ZHONGTIAN has been called Asia’s “aluminium king”. His firm, Zhongwang Group, is one of the world’s largest makers of aluminium products. At one point he was the richest man in China’s north-eastern rust belt, where the company is based. In America, Mr Liu has a different reputation. Firms controlled by the 57-year-old were convicted in late August of orchestrating one of the most brazen tariff-avoidance schemes in history. Now his empire appears to be coming undone, not at the hands of American prosecutors but owing to domestic economic woes.
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Zhongwang’s long, hollow metal rods are
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