What Turns (some) Chinese Managers into Degenerate Gamblers?

As if trying to do business focusing on your core isn't difficult enough. Maybe that's the problem? It's too boring? It turns out that COSCO, the shipping giant, may have lost 4B RMB by betting wrong on an obscure shipping derivative (ChinaStakes). Not so long ago there was Citic Pacific gambling on the Australian dollar (China Daily), I can count no less than three direct competitors in our aluminum extrusions business that are now undergoing liquidation or are under bank control.

Putting corporate assets into any number unrelated commodities and investments like real estate (China Law Blog) seems to be a bit of a pervasive practice and it seems sometimes unique to China. Maybe it's something in the (bottled) water?