With so many officials and private businessmen eager to curry favor with his father, Zhou Bin had no difficulty cashing in. His business activities include brokering sales of oil-field equipment to Iraq (causing huge losses for Chinese state-owned oil companies); construction of hydroelectric power stations in Sichuan (where his father was the provincial party boss from 1997 to 2002); providing information technology for 8,000 state-owned gas stations; and investments in real estate, oil exploration, and toll roads.