Written by: Fish CoolFish
Recently, group members have been discussing three "CZ"s—namely Binance founder Zhao Changpeng, Manus COO CZ Chen, and the recently arrested and repatriated Taizi Group boss Chen Zhi.
If Ar Bao in “Blossoms” is a glamorous transformation under the opportunities of 1990s Shanghai, then the stories below are three different scripts chosen by the three CZs amid the wave of globalization.
Three people, three stories, spanning nearly half a century…
1. Chen Zhi and the Era of the Grassroots—The Myth of Wealth in the Gray Area
In the mid-2010s, China’s capital outflow sentiment was high. This was a special moment: on one hand, China’s economic strength was continuously improving, foreign exchange reserves were ample, and domestic enterprises and investment institutions had an increasingly strong desire to go global, urgently seeking new growth points overseas; on the other hand, the regulatory framework for global cross-border capital flows lagged behind market changes, with some countries’ entry rules and review standards still being adjusted and improved, creating a certain flexible space due to regulatory differences across markets.
There were many gray areas, and many opportunities.
Chen Zhi (, abbreviated as CZ), rose in this context. The 38-year-old businessman built a transnational scam network, with daily income once reaching as high as 30 million USD. This figure is enough to make anyone’s eyes widen. But more importantly, this number represented an unconstrained gray area.
In Chen Zhi’s story, we see a grassroots entrepreneur going overseas, but the direction was crooked—very crooked. He did not create value through product innovation, technological progress, or management optimization. Instead, he accumulated wealth through direct, aggressive, and even illegal means.
He established a “scam center” in Cambodia, using forced labor to conduct online scams targeting victims worldwide. He attempted to launder money through financial instruments, utilizing cryptocurrencies, cross-border payments, multi-national registration, and other methods to evade regulation.
Why could this model exist?
The answer is simple: because no one could effectively stop it. In the mid-2010s, global regulation of transnational cybercrime was not as strict as it is now. Law enforcement cooperation between countries was also not tight enough. **Someone with courage, resources, and the ability to lobby, tilt rules, and obtain jurisdictional immun
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