In 1998 a former People’s Liberation Army basketball player turned businessman, Xu Zengping, purchased the Varyag, a never-completed Soviet aircraft-carrier hull rotting in a Ukrainian shipyard ...

Xu Zengping, 65, the People’s Liberation Army Navy proxy who bought the unfinished carrier from a Ukrainian shipyard, said the purchase of the HK$220 million (US$28.1 million) luxury home in ...

Xu Zengping knew the moment that he saw the hulk of a half-built Soviet aircraft carrier anchored in a cash-strapped Black Sea shipyard that he had to buy it for China.