Tuesday, May 18, 2021

DONALD TRUMP - WHITE-COLLAR CRIMINAL STILL ON THE LAM - The attorney general's office is now working with the Manhattan district attorney's office, which has been investigating the Trump Organization for potential bank, tax and insurance fraud.

 

Why do Trump's foreign golf resorts lose millions of dollars every year? Experts say it could be incompetence, vanity, or something more sinister

Thomas Colson
·9 min read
Trump Golfing Virginia 2020
Donald Trump's golf courses lose millions of dollars every year, according to financial documents. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
  • Donald Trump's flagship foreign golf resorts posts massive losses every year.

  • He has said they are "not really golf investments" but "development deals."

  • Experts and critics think Trump may have other reasons for keeping them.

  • Sign up for the 10 Things in Politics daily newsletter.

Donald Trump's golf resorts lose a lot of money. According to a bombshell New York Times report published last year, the 15 courses he owns around the world have lost over $315 million over the past 20 years. The interesting question is why does Trump hang on to so many money-losing enterprises?

Much about Trump's financial arrangements remains a mystery - partly because privately listed companies in the US can largely avoid public scrutiny - though investigations into whether Trump committed bank and tax fraud may reveal more.

No one's quite sure how much he's worth. No one's sure why the self-styled "king of debt" decided to plow up to $400 million into his two Scottish golf resorts. And no one's sure what his tax returns might turn up.

But because the United Kingdom has a registry of companies that requires them to publicly file accounts every year, we can look in detail at how much his two courses in Scotland lose every year and how much debt they've racked up. (Hint: It's a lot.)

So why do Trump and his sons, who ran his businesses while he was president, continue to run courses that lose so much money?

Read more: EXCLUSIVE: Documents reveal how Trump is spending taxpayer money on his postpresidential offices - from printer toner to Stephen Miller's salary

We spoke to leading experts, examined the financial data, and looked back at Trump's own words on the matter to find out why.

Insider contacted the Trump Organization for comment but did not receive a reply.

Trump's losses aren't 'normal'

Losses at Golf Recreation Scotland Limited, Turnberry's parent company, amounted to over £2.3 million, or $3.25 million, in 2019.
Companies House (UK)

Trump has two golf resorts in Scotland. He opened the first, Trump International Golf Links, in Aberdeenshire in 2012 on a piece of land he had purchased six years before. The course has lost money every year since.

Company accounts for 2019 - which covered the period before COVID-19 wreaked havoc on many businesses - showed that Trump International Golf Club Scotland Limited, which owns the course, posted an annual loss of $1.5 million. The total debt on the resort is more than $60 million, the balance sheet showed.

The second course is Turnberry, the crown jewel of his global golf empire. He paid $60 million in 2014 for the storied resort, where Tom Watson famously scraped out a win over Jack Nicklaus at the 1977 Open Championship.

Trump claimed to have spent a further $150 million on its lavish refurbishment. Turnberry's parent company, Golf Recreation Scotland, posted a $3.25 million loss on revenue of $26 million in 2019 and owes nearly $160 million to its creditors, the balance sheet showed.

Such losses are not unprecedented in the industry. Running a golf resort profitably is hard to do, said Larry Hirsh, the president of Golf Property Analysts, which values and markets golf properties.

"Over the last 10 to 20 years, golf courses have had their challenges," Hirsh told Insider.

"It costs a lot to go play, and Trump has never been shy about pricing his properties. Certainly, golf has experienced over the last 15 or 20 years a decline in participation," he said.

However, he added that "it's certainly not the idea" for major golf courses to lose money. "I don't think it's normal," he said.

Trump said his golf courses were 'not really golf investments'

Trump Turnberry

Trump said in a 2016 interview with Reuters that people looking at the massive losses at his golf resorts were missing the point.

He said his resorts were "not really golf investments" but real-estate "development deals."

"It's pretty simple," he said. "My golf holdings are really investments in thousands, many thousands of housing units and hotels. At some point the company will do them. Hopefully, I won't because I will be president, but we're in no rush to do them."

Losses at Trump International Golf Club Scotland Limited, which runs his Aberdeenshire course, amounted to over £1.1 million, or $1.55 million, in 2019.
Companies House (UK)

There's just one problem with those claims: Trump hasn't built a single residential property on any golf resort he owns in the past decade, in Europe or the United States, Reuters reported last year.

He secured provisional permission in 2008 to build about 1,500 luxury homes and a hotel on farmland surrounding the Aberdeenshire estate, in what the Trump Organization had billed as the "world's greatest golf course." The economic gains would outweigh the environmental impact of the building work, officials said. But neither the houses nor the hotel materialized.

In 2019, he secured approval for a reworked plan to build 500 homes, but construction hasn't started.

At Turnberry, Trump failed to secure permission to develop hundreds of houses on the adjoining land. He had boasted to Reuters that he "would have the right to build at least a thousand houses on Turnberry, if I wanted to." But Scottish planners had different ideas. In 2019, the local authority rejected plans to develop the land, The Scotsman reported.

The ruling said the development could "negatively affect" Turnberry's status as an iconic resort. It suggests that Trump's plan to build houses on his golf resorts may be unsound from a business perspective.

That brings us to the second theory: incompetence.

Is it simply incompetence?

trump golf ivanka
Getty

"Stupidity and grandiosity should never be overlooked as possible grounds for all of this," said Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School, who wrote about Trump's tax returns last year.

Trump's patchy business record is well documented. He demonstrated a genius for self-marketing and licensed his name to resorts and luxury developments all over the world, propelling him to the White House. But his businesses have also filed for bankruptcy six times, and he counts dozens of hugely expensive failures among his successful business ventures.

There were his Atlantic City casinos, which closed after racking up billions of dollars in debt. There was Trump University, which paid a $25 million settlement to former students in 2017 after New York's attorney general called it "fraudulent." And there was a short-lived airline called Trump Shuttle.

The accounts for Turnberry and Trump Links suggest they may be two further examples of poorly run businesses. A detailed analysis of Trump's two courses by Behind the Balance Sheet, a financial research consultancy, illustrated that profits had been consistently lower than at other established rivals in Scotland, including Loch Lomond Golf Club and Gleneagles, and that capital expenditure had consistently outstripped revenue growth at both resorts.

All in all, it's difficult to see how either business would ever generate a positive return on Trump's huge initial investment.

Are they being kept for 'fishy' tax purposes?

trump golf scotland
Getty

Companies House accounts showed that Golf Recreation Scotland, Turnberry's parent company, depends on an eye-watering amount of debt - around $160 million - owed to its parent company, the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which is registered in New York.

Trump International Golf Club Scotland, which controls Trump's Aberdeenshire resort, owed Trump more than $55 million, and nearly $5 million to its parent company, DJT Holdings.

Their loans are unusual, however, because they are interest-free, negating the tax benefit of loaning money between companies owned by Trump, Mother Jones reported in November.

It's "a bit fishy," Shaviro said.

"Under US tax law, you can't really have an interest-free loan between related parties," he said.

"There would be a tendency to impute the market interest rate, or else they say it's really equity.

"So when separate tax entities are engaged in transactions, the idea is that it's got to be arm's length, it's got to reflect reality."

Shaviro said it wasn't clear there was any tax benefit to the way Trump had set up the loans.

"I don't see the obvious tax benefits here," he said. "Whether it's money-laundering or playing games with lenders, there is a pretty good guess something is going on, but I'm not sure exactly what it would be."

That brings us to the last theory.

Trump's 'unexplained' funding for his golf courses

donald trump golf
Getty

A group of Scottish lawmakers led by the Green Party's Patrick Harvie this year called for an "unexplained wealth order" over Trump's finances. Their central question: Where did Trump get the money to pay for his resorts in the first place?

Harvie, a member of Scottish Parliament, said in February: "The purchases in Scotland were part of a very long spending spree, with his spokespeople claiming that he had vast sums of money sitting around and available for investment even though, at the same time, he was apparently being turned down for credit."

Trump, who once called himself the "king of debt," had spent his career building businesses on other people's borrowed money, even bragging about it on the campaign trail in 2016.

He began that spending spree in 2006, buying up more than $400 million worth of properties in cash over the next decade, The Washington Post reported in 2018. The first purchase was his Balmedie estate. The most expensive was Turnberry in 2014, even though it was losing money then, too. He purchased a course in Doonbeg, Ireland, in the same year, also using cash.

Harvie alluded to the closed-door congressional testimony in 2017 of Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, the political-research agency that produced the so-called Steele dossier on links between Trump and Russia (one part of which a UK judge called "misleading").

Simpson told lawmakers that the firm's investigations had identified in the Trump Organization "patterns of buying and selling" real estate that "were suggestive of money laundering."

Later, he said that "because the Irish courses and the Scottish courses are under the UK," Fusion GPS was "able to get the financial statements."

"And they don't, on their face, show Russian involvement, but what they do show is enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources and - or at least on paper it says it's from the Trump Organization, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars," Simpson said. "And these golf courses are just, you know, they're sinks. They don't actually make any money."

Trump's son Eric said last year that Harvie's claims had "no basis in fact" and called them "disgusting."

Scotland's government rejected the calls for an unexplained wealth order on the grounds that it was for the country's law officers, not politicians, to instigate such investigations. Nonetheless, these questions about how Trump paid for his golf resorts and why they keep losing so much money will only grow.

Read the original article on Business Insider

New York AG: "We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity"

Rebecca Falconer
·1 min read

The New York attorney general's office said Tuesday night it has informed the Trump Organization that its investigation into the company "is no longer purely civil in nature" and is now also a criminal one.

Why it matters: The attorney general's office is now working with the Manhattan district attorney's office, which has been investigating the Trump Organization for potential bank, tax and insurance fraud.

Driving the news: New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) announced in 2019 that her office was investigating Trump Organization finances.

  • Her office filed a lawsuit last August to compel the organization to comply with subpoenas for an investigation into whether former President Trump and his company improperly inflated the value of its assets on financial statements.

  • Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for James, said in an emailed statement Tuesday: "We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA." Levy declined to comment further.

What they're saying: Representatives for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment on the news, first reported by CNN.

  • But Trump has previously denied any wrongdoing and accused James of "politically motivated harassment" and called Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance's investigation a political "witch hunt."

JOE BIDEN THE LYING LAWYER - Biden in Michigan Ignores Record Allowing China to Buy Up American Electric Vehicle Industry

 

Biden in Michigan Ignores Record Allowing China to Buy Up American Electric Vehicle Industry

US President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center, in Dearborn, Michigan on May 18, 2021. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
6:23

President Joe Biden, while touting his $174 billion electric vehicle (EV) plan, ignored his record of allowing Chinese investors with ties to the Chinese Communist Party to buy up key parts of the American EV industry.

During a speech at the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, Biden touted his record as vice president to former President Barack Obama in relation to the nation’s battery-powered EVs.

“Our own Department of Energy pioneered and transformed the battery industry when Barack and I were in office. And through the Recovery Act’s grants and loans, battery prices dropped 80 percent because we were looking forward,” Biden said.

Biden also said he would not allow “a single contract go to a single company that does not hire Americans, have all American parts, and has an American supply chain that is an American product supply chain.”

Unmentioned in the speech, though, was Biden’s record of allowing Chinese investors with Chinese Communist Party ties to acquire American companies with EV technology capabilities.

Detailed analysis by Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour showed extensively how the Obama-Biden administration had let China buy up this critical industry in the United States market from 2009 to 2016:

The biggest winner in this push for an all-electric future is China, which is eager for the transition to EV because the communist regime does not have the same access to plentiful oil and gas as American consumers. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party has made dominance of the EV industry a key goal in its ambitious China 2025 initiative, hoping to overtake Detroit as the world’s automotive capital.

Indeed, China is positioning itself to do just that. Companies like Ford and General Motors have partnered with Chinese state-owned companies to develop and manufacture new electric vehicles in Asia. Ford has 16 new electric models coming out of China in the next few years, and GM intends to launch 20 electric models in China by 2023.

To be fair, the entire worldwide auto industry seems eager for an all-electric future. Nearly all of the world’s auto manufacturers are investing heavily in EV. There’s a reason for this, and it has less to do with the environment and more to do with the industry’s bottom line.

When you eliminate the internal combustion engine, you eliminate hundreds of components that comprise it. This will dramatically change the landscape of the automotive industry for millions of parts suppliers, engineers, mechanics, and countless blue-collar workers. That’s because the average electric vehicle deletes over 300 components. The fuel-powered vehicle’s engine, transmission, gas tank, radiator, hoses, pumps, starter motor, mounting brackets, etc. will all become obsolete.

This will dramatically reduce the amount of money it costs to produce a vehicle, but it will also reduce the number of blue-collar workers all along the supply chain needed to create those parts and assemble the finished product. However, the sticker price of the electric vehicle will not be reduced. These vehicles will be just as expensive for consumers as gas-powered vehicles even though they cost less to manufacture. In other words, EVs will be a cash cow for the big auto companies, but will not necessarily benefit American workers, American consumers (who are still skeptical of EVs), or even the American environment which relies on a fossil fuel-based power grid to charge EV batteries.

Most notably, the Obama-Biden administration approved the acquisition of the Michigan-based electric battery company A123 Systems in 2013 after previously being rewarded with American taxpayer dollars worth $12.5 million to develop lithium ion battery technology for plug-in hybrid EVs.

Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had particular ties to such Chinese acquisitions of American EV companies, Mansour notes:

Consider, for example, China’s controversial acquisition of the Michigan-based electric battery company A123 Systems. In 2008, the company was awarded a $12.5 million grant sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy to develop lithium ion battery technology for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. But now this American taxpayer-funded research is owned by China, thanks to the Obama-Biden administration’s approval of the company’s sale in 2013.

In 2016, China purchased the electric vehicle company Fisker Automotive, after U.S. taxpayers had spent $193 million funding the company’s electric vehicle research. Fisker was based in Biden’s home state of Delaware, and it benefitted from a “fog of politically connected investors and lobbyists,” according to the Washington Post. The Obama-Biden administration approved China’s purchase of Fisker, again despite all the money American taxpayers spent funding the company’s research.

In 2015, the private equity firm of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, partnered with a Chinese military contractor to acquire Henniges Automotive, another Michigan-based company. Henniges created dual-use military technology that China’s communist regime wanted. Despite all the red-flags that this sensitive technology would end up in the hands of China’s military, the Obama-Biden administration approved the company’s sale.

Specifically, in 2008, Biden’s Department of Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm — then, the Governor of Michigan — approved a $10 million taxpayer-funded grant to A123 Systems and praised the move. In 2013, the Obama-Biden administration approved the Wanxiang Group’s acquisition of A123 Systems.

database compiled by Public Citizen reveals hundreds of cases where the Obama-Biden administration approved Chinese acquisitions of American companies — many in the auto and batteries industry.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

DEMOCRAT BILLIONAIRE BLOOMBERG RAN FOR PRESIDENT ON THE DEMS' OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY AND 'FREE' HOUSING FOR ILLEGALS PLATFORM.

do a search for China's great whore, Biden endorser Dianne Feinstein!

Joe Biden’s younger brother, LAWYER James Biden, is purportedly under federal investigation by the United States Attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania for his role in a now-bankrupt healthcare firm.

After Hunter called his business partner “the chief spy in China,” U.S. law enforcement reportedly surveilled the Chinese businessman later as a “foreign intelligence threat” before his conviction for bribery in 2018.

The Biden family is notorious for being the crookedest clan not only in Delaware, but in D.C. DANIEL GREENFILED, FELLOW, SHILLMAN JOURNALISM, FREEDOM CENTER

LAWYER JOE BIDEN’S LAWYER INFESTED SWAMP

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-biden-nominated-lawyer-xavier.html

Like Hunter Biden, Becerra has zero experience, in his case with health and welfare issues, having focused on trade, immigration, and law enforcement while in his well-padded government jobs. He's very adept at corruption, though, with scandals everywhere he ever went.

There's undoubtedly a whole raft of scandals linked to his name because he's a big reason why California is what it's become. These scandals are just a sampling and a deep dive will undoubtedly reveal that he's more corruption than actual pol. It's like Joe Biden is surrounding himself with men like himself.

Exclusive: Bombshell Photos Reveal Years of Meetings Between Bloomberg Executives and Chinese Propagandists in Beijing

Michael Bloomberg and Jiang Jianguo (Photo: China SCIO)
Photo: China SCIO
8:38

Michael Bloomberg and his top associates at his namesake news conglomerate, Bloomberg LP, have regularly met in Beijing with top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials and propagandists, according to the Chinese government. I document these meetings, which have taken place over several years, in my book Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruptionreleased May 18th.

According to documents reviewed while researching for this book, these propagandists regulate Bloomberg LP and control the extent to which the former Democrat mega-donor-turned presidential candidate’s business can access the gigantic Chinese market. Michael Bloomberg himself has spoken favorably—even glowingly—about China, President Xi Jinping, and other top Beijing officials. Bloomberg LP seemingly does a lot more business with China than its competitors.

Breitbart News is revealing images for the first time in American media that confirm the meetings. Details of the meeting, which appear here and in Breaking the News, originally were posted to an official Chinese state media website and have not yet been published in the U.S. press.

In the book, I reveal details of a year-long investigation into corporate media I conducted with a small team of researchers. Among the books’ numerous bombshells, I report on the true extent to which American media outlets are willing to go to curry favor with the Communist regime in China.

At these meetings, according to the Chinese government, the CCP and Bloomberg officials discussed, among other topics, “cooperation in the field of media,” “the introduction of Chinese stories to the world,” and “strengthening media cooperation between China and the U.S.”

Foreign distributors of financial data within China—of which Bloomberg is one of the largest—are forced to seek licensure from the State Council Information Office (SCIO), which is an agency under the auspices of China’s State Council. In other words, his ability to do business in China is subject to the will of what is effectively China’s executive branch. Since the Bloomberg license is renewed every two years, the pressure is always on to cozy up to top Beijing officials, and that’s exactly what Bloomberg appears to have done.

China’s SCIO is also commonly known as the Central Office of Foreign Propaganda.

China also can bar Bloomberg (and any foreign institution) from providing all sorts of financial information services in China. So, not only is Bloomberg’s access to the Chinese market subject to review and cancellation by the Communist Party every twenty-four months, the CCP can (and will) restrict any content it believes undermines the national interest.

Here are some of the details of the known meetings:

  • On August 19, 2015: Michael Bloomberg met with Jiang Jianguo, director of the State Council Information Office (SCIO) and deputy director of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China; the latter office is the CCP’s department, which makes Jianguo the vice minister of propaganda. According to the Chinese government, they discussed “international exchange and cooperation in the field of media.”

Michael Bloomberg and Jiang Jianguo (Photo: China SCIO)

  • December 21, 2015: Bloomberg LP global executive vice president Kevin Sheekey met with Jiang as well as Zhang Fuhai and Zhang Hongbin, respectively the director general and deputy director general of the SCIO Internet Affairs Bureau. They run an arm of the Chinese regime that deals with Internet censorship. Sheekey would become Michael Bloomberg’s campaign manager for his 2020 presidential run.

Kevin Sheekey and Jiang Jianguo in Beijing (Photo: China SCIO)

Kevin Sheekey and Jiang Jianguo in Beijing (Photo by Jiao Fei/China SCIO)

  • June 7, 2017: Kevin Sheekey, who was then vice president of government relations at Bloomberg LP, again met with communist propaganda minister Jiang. According to the Chinese government, “they talked about China-U.S. media exchanges and cooperation, the introduction of Chinese stories to the world, and efforts to promote healthy and stable relations between the two countries.”

Kevin Sheekey and delegation with Jiang Jianguo in Beijing (Photo: China SCIO)

  • July 11, 2018: Otis Bilodeau, senior executive editor of Bloomberg Asia Pacific, met with the vice minister of the SCIO, Guo Weimin, one of the top Communist Party spokesmen.

Guo Weimin and Otis Bilodeau in Beijing (Photo by Jiao Fei/China SCIO)

Guo Weimin meeting with a delegation headed by Otis Bilodeau in Beijing (Photo by Jiao Fei/China SCIO)

  • April 13, 2018: John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, met with the vice minister of the SCIO. From a Beijing readout: “The two sides held discussions on strengthening media cooperation between China and the U.S., enhancing understanding between Chinese and Western citizens, presenting China to the world, as well as China-U.S. relations.” In other words, the CCP claims that Bloomberg’s top editor advised a top communist official on how to “present China to the world.”

John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, in Beijing with Guo Weimin. (Photo by Jiao Fei/China SCIO)

  • May 9, 2018: Jiang Jianguo, the deputy propaganda minister, met again with Sheekey in Beijing. This time they discussed, according to Beijing, “expanding communication and cooperation between the media of China and the U.S., promoting understandings between Chinese and western citizens, as well as China-U.S. relations.”

Translation: the future campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg’s presidential run met yet again with one of the CCP’s top propagandists, and according to the Chinese government, they repeatedly discussed cooperation between the two nations and their media establishments.

This appears to go far beyond “cozying up to China.” According to the Chinese government, Bloomberg executives regularly fly to China to meet with top Communist Party members, including propagandists, in order to forge deep partnership on all manner of issues. In fact, this has been the culture at Bloomberg for at least a decade, apparently. In 2013, it was reported that then-Bloomberg News editor in chief Matthew Winkler likened members of the Chinese ruling class to Nazis — but emphasized to his journalists that if said “Nazis” felt judged, they were likely to kick the journalists out of the country.

In Breaking the News, I also delve into the details of Michael Bloomberg’s short-lived presidential run. In 2019, Bloomberg said in an interview that “Xi Jinping is not a dictator.” He most certainly is; he even made himself “president for life.” Bloomberg, an anti-climate change activist, has complimented China’s environmental policies despite the fact they release by far the most carbon dioxide of any country on earth.

Bloomberg himself remains one of the most powerful players in American media and in Democrat Party politics.

Yet, Bloomberg was not the only major news outlet to send representatives to Beijing to form ties with anti-American propagandists.

More details can be found in Breaking the News.

Ohio State Researcher Sentenced to Prison for Concealing Ties to Chinese Spy Program

The Chinese flag flies over the China's consulate in Houston after the U.S. ordered its closure / Getty Images
 • May 14, 2021 5:25 pm

A U.S. district court sentenced a former Ohio State University medical researcher to prison for concealing his connections to a Chinese spy program from federal authorities.

Song Guo Zheng, a professor of internal medicine who led research teams at both Ohio State and Pennsylvania State University, hid his involvement in the Chinese Communist Party's Thousand Talents Program, which China uses to steal research from Western countries, on applications to the National Institutes of Health. Zheng also concealed his collaboration with a major Chinese research university.

Federal authorities apprehended Zheng in May 2020 on a charter flight in Anchorage, Alaska, as he attempted to flee the United States for China. After his arrest, Zheng pleaded guilty in November 2020 to falsifying grant applications to the federal government to receive some $4.1 million in funding, which he planned to use to develop China's research on rheumatology and immunology.

On top of his 37-month prison sentence, the court ordered the Chinese researcher to pay more than $3.8 million in restitution to NIH and Ohio State.

"In yet another case involving the Chinese government's Thousand Talents program, Song Guo Zheng will spend the next 37 months in a federal prison because he chose to lie and hide his involvement in this program from U.S. research funding agencies," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers. "American research funding is provided by the American taxpayer for the benefit of American society—not as an illicit gift to the Chinese government. The American people deserve total transparency when federal dollars are being provided for research."

Zheng is only the latest science researcher to be caught stealing U.S. intellectual property for China. In January, a NASA scientist pleaded guilty for concealing his affiliation with China's Thousand Talents Program. Through the organization, Beijing recruits scientists in Western countries to steal research as it aims to surpass the United States in technological competition. The federal government opens a China-related counterintelligence case every 10 hours, FBI Director Christopher Wray said last year.

Ohio State University and Pennsylvania State University did not respond to requests for comment.

The Biden family is notorious for being the crookedest clan not only in Delaware, but in D.C. DANIEL GREENFILED, FELLOW, SHILLMAN JOURNALISM, FREEDOM CENTER

The Hunter Biden laptop unrolls two ragged threads. One is the descent of Joe Biden’s son into new depths of depravity and the other are the foreign investors who bought into Joe Biden Inc

 A business partner Hunter Biden called “the chief spy of China,” assigned the president’s son a Chinese-American secretary who was feeding him opposition research to help Joe Biden’s 2020 election bid after the business venture collapsed in 2018, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

How China Co-Opted the Olympics

Olympics bigwigs dismissed human rights abuses behind closed doors

IOC President Thomas Bach meets with CCP leader Xi Jinping
 • May 15, 2021 5:00 am

When Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs, the 2022 Beijing Olympics chief, met with Chinese dissidents in a closed-door October meeting, he firmly rejected their plea to relocate the games out of China to protest human rights abuses. "The world lives under very many political systems. We cannot go and say and endorse one or the other. That is not what we do," Salisachs told activists, according to meeting minutes obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The activists were stunned. "[Salisachs] was talking to me as if he knows so much better than we do," Frances Hui, a Hong Kong activist who attended the meeting, told the Free Beacon. "We were all in shock—they were so disrespectful to us."

The October meeting was far from the first time an Olympics official dismissed Chinese human rights concerns. Salisachs's comments echoed those made by his father—Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former president of the International Olympics Committee—in the years leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The senior Samaranch, remembered today in China as a "dream-maker," for years turned a blind eye to Chinese state repression, telling reporters in 2008, "If we are talking about human rights, many countries that attack China should look at themselves." When pressed, the senior Samaranch often switched up his arguments, saying that the IOC can leverage its international prestige to nudge China to improve its human rights record.

The IOC has abandoned even the pretense of using its influence to reform the Chinese regime. Salisachs refused to consider discussions about Chinese human rights abuses, telling activists the Olympics is not the place to deliberate "political agendas," according to the meeting minutes.

"To try to leverage on the Olympic Games to obtain a number of political agendas is very dangerous," Salisachs said during the October meeting.

Since the 2008 Olympics, the authoritarian country has only strengthened its grip over society, inflicting genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and violent repression in Hong Kong and Tibet. While the IOC failed to influence China, the communist regime has managed to co-opt the IOC. In the last decade or so, the Chinese state fostered corporate sponsorships, personal ties, and institutional connections with Olympics executives, making it difficult for any games to be held without Chinese support.

"The IOC benefits a lot from Chinese business and Chinese government," Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer who attended the October meeting, told the Free Beacon. "And some senior officials have conflicts of interests."

China's multi-year effort to influence the IOC—ranging from a Samaranch memorial park the size of five football fields to lucrative deals with Chinese tech company Alibaba—provides a cautionary tale of how China uses its global influence to co-opt international organizations. China has used similar tactics to sway a wide range of international institutions, from the WHO to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The influence peddling operations have proven effective: The WHO refuses to give membership to Taiwan; meanwhile, Chinese diplomats in the UNHRC threaten experts who testify about China’s genocide of Muslim Uyghurs.

The Chinese state used a multi-pronged strategy to influence the IOC. One of the most important pillars of this strategy was the cultivation of personal ties to the Samaranch family. The senior Samaranch helped China whip the votes necessary to secure the right to host the 2008 Olympics. When he died in 2010, China built a 144,000-square-meter memorial park in Tianjin, China. The memorial opened in 2013 and displays 16,000 items from the former IOC president's "personal collection—books, stamps, souvenirs, paintings, letters, photographs, and personal items." Chinese leader Xi Jinping posthumously awarded Samaranch the "China Reform Friendship Medal" in 2018, recognizing him as one of 10 foreigners who contributed to China in the post-Mao era.

As the Chinese state showered Samaranch with honors, his son, Salisachs, climbed up through the ranks of the IOC. The younger Salisachs became a vice president on the IOC executive board in 2016, and soon after was named the chairman of the coordination commission for the 2022 games. He is considered a likely contender for the IOC presidency in 2025. Salisachs, like his father, is now one of the regime's public boosters, appearing on Chinese propaganda outlets to praise the authoritarian regime. In February 2020, Salisachs downplayed the coronavirus threat during an interview with Xinhua News, a Chinese state-owned outlet. He praised China's "transparent, efficient, and strong" pandemic response.

"The population and the administrators of the Chinese government are giving the world an example of how to cope with a very serious thing," he said.

Teng, the human rights lawyer, said that Salisachs is an example of how senior IOC officials are willing to stay silent on Chinese human rights abuses to pursue their own interests. "The IOC's top officials have very good connections to the Chinese government," Teng said. "They may have said they are in favor of human rights, but that's only lip service."

The Chinese government has increased its reach into the IOC in recent years. Yu Zaiqing, a senior Chinese Communist Party official, has sat alongside Salisachs on the IOC executive board since 2014. China is one of six countries—and the only non-Western state—to have three active-duty IOC members. China's representation in the IOC gives it outsized influence on IOC decisions, including where to host the next Olympics.

While the Chinese state built ties to the Samaranch family, Chinese corporate entities established lucrative sponsorship deals with the IOC. None has played a greater role than Chinese tech giant Alibaba. As part of a 12-year deal—which was discussed in a meeting between Xi and IOC president Thomas Bach—Alibaba will play an "active role" in providing essential tech services for all Olympic Games, including the 2022 Beijing Games. The company has pledged to use its cloud computing infrastructure to help international broadcasters stream the games across the world. That assistance is essential for the bottomline of the IOC, which makes nearly three quarters of its $5 billion revenue by selling broadcasting rights. Alibaba will also run the Olympics' official online store in China, playing a mediator role between the IOC and Chinese consumers.

"This is much more than a traditional sponsorship," a senior Alibaba executive said in 2017. "We are committed to supporting the IOC to transform the Olympic Games for the digital era."

While Alibaba is ostensibly independent, the Chinese government has for years threatened to bring the tech company under its heel. After founder Jack Ma criticized the country's financial policy in 2020, the Chinese state slapped a massive fine on the company and imposed regulations that allow Beijing greater oversight of its operations. The Chinese government is also considering ousting Ma from his own company.

The IOC counts other Chinese companies as major sponsors as well. Mengniu Dairy, a Chinese beverage company, signed a $3 billion deal with the IOC and Coca-Cola, one of the biggest deals of its kind in sports history. The IOC also works with the Chinese company ANTA to manufacture Olympics uniforms—an arrangement that came under fire in April after ANTA confirmed it used cotton made in Xinjiang for its products. The IOC has yet to announce any changes to the partnership, despite concerns that Xinjiang-made cotton relies on forced labor for its production.

And the pandemic will likely further strengthen the Chinese government's influence over the IOC—China will sell its vaccine to all contestants in the 2022 Beijing Olympics as well as the postponed 2021 Tokyo Olympics. "We are grateful for this offer, which is in the true Olympic spirit of solidarity," Bach, the current IOC president, said in a March online meeting announcing the vaccine purchases.

Since the October meeting, activists have shifted their efforts to calling on countries and corporations to boycott the Olympics—a measure supported by some U.S. politicians. They say they changed their strategy when the IOC ignored them after the meeting, despite a pledge to continue the dialogue.

"Their strategy after the meeting was to ignore us, pretend that they don’t know anything about the human rights abuses," Hui, the Hong Kong activist, said. "All of us got out of the meeting with a huge disappointment."

Report: Apple Suppliers in China Linked to Uyghur Forced Labor

Tim Cook, Apple CEO, in China
NG HAN GUAN /Getty
2:24

A new report alleges that seven Apple suppliers may have used forced Uyghur labor in China. An Apple spokesperson claims, “We will continue doing all we can to protect workers and ensure they are treated with dignity and respect.”

According to a recent report from the Information, several Apple suppliers have allegedly been using forced labor in China. The Information worked alongside two human rights groups to identify seven companies that supply products to Apple and allegedly support forced labor programs, including programs that targeted China’s Uyghur Muslim minority population.

Six of the seven suppliers were said to participate in work programs operated by the Chinese government. The Information states that according to human rights groups, workers can be jailed for refusing to join the work programs and those enrolled in the programs are often moved far away from their homes.

One supplies operated in Xinjiang, the region of China predominantly populated by Uyghur Muslims and where the worst human rights violations have reportedly taken place. The companies supplied Apple with various components including antennas, cables, and coatings, among other products.

An Apple spokesperson told the Information that it “found no evidence of forced labor anywhere we operate.” Apple said that it looks for forced labor as part of “every assessment” it conducts and does not work with suppliers that take part in such programs.

“We will continue doing all we can to protect workers and ensure they are treated with dignity and respect,” the Apple spokesperson said. The use of forced labor has become a major issue for the tech community, where many components and products are produced overseas in China.

In January, the Trump administration said that China has “committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”

This is not the first time that Apple has been accused of using forced labor, in December of last year it was reported that the company had dealt with suppliers taking part in these programs.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com


Hunter Biden and a Female Chinese Operative

Disturbing smoke over political opposition research and a presidential election.

  17 comments

Hunter Biden did more than abuse drugs and use his father's influence to enrich himself and his family. The youngest son of Joe Biden also acted as a conduit -- willingly or otherwise -- of political information that could be used against President Donald Trump in last year's Presidential election.

Providing the information was JiaQi Bao, a young woman who worked in the United States as an advisor to Ye Jianming, the founder and chairman of the now-bankrupt conglomerate, CEFE China Energy. That conglomerate, as well as a Chinese investment firm, Bohai Harvest, served as Hunter Biden's business partners.

Both firms also acted as fronts for the Chinese government and Communist Party.

On May 7, Britain's Daily Mail published information it received from the younger Biden's laptop about his relationship with Bao and her influence on him. Yet five months ago, a cyber security expert from New York, Yaacov Apelbaum, published the findings on his own blog, "The Illustrated Primer." 

Chinese intelligence "controlled large parts of the strategy, funding, and overseas operations" for Bohai Harvest and CEFE China Energy, Apelbaum wrote. But in March 2018, when the conglomerate went bankrupt, Ye was arrested in China and charged with bribery. Since then, the world has received no news about Ye's whereabouts or fate.

Bao also encouraged Hunter Biden to keep $1.4 million that rightfully belonged to the bankrupt conglomerate's creditors. By doing so, the Chinese might have trapped the Bidens into doing their bidding.

Bao developed the perfect resume to become a Chinese operative in the United States' financial sector. An honors student, Bao graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with bachelor's degrees in accounting and finance, and received immediate acceptance into the master's program for accounting at the university's W.P. Carey School of Business.

Bao then returned to China to work for three months as an intern for OneGate Capital Equity before moving to the National Development and Reform Commission, where she worked for another three months as a research assistant. Bao's LinkedIn profile describes the commission as "a policymaking and macro-economic management agency with broad administrative and planning controls over the Chinese economy."

In other words, the Chinese government and Communist Party use the NDRC to dictate economic policy. The NDRC also is responsible for the "social credit" system.

At the same time, Bao was attending Tsinghua University, described as "China's foremost institute of higher learning" in her profile. "It has been the most important training ground for China's top leaders in academics, business, (and) government." Bao graduated with distinction as a bilingual Master of Arts in the summer of 2012.

After spending seven months with OneGate as an analyst, Bao moved to New York and joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2013 as a senior associate. She worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers for three years, then became an independent consultant.

Sometime during her tenure as an independent consultant, Bao became Hunter Biden's secretary, friend, and informal advisor. Apelbaum posted a screenshot of a conversation between the two on the Chinese platform WeChat, and some of her more alluring photos from her WeChat page.

Apelbaum also posted pictures of Biden wearing military dog tags during a sexual tryst, apparently with Bao, who wrote the following when Biden lost the dog tags. Bao described them as a "doggie chain."

…regarding the delivery of your doggie chain and holiday/birthday package. I safe (sic) kept your belonging (sic) for you as promised. I don’t think it is appropriate to drop off to a third party given the risk of miscommunication as happened in the past. How about I will either deliver it to you in person at your convenience or FedEx to a designated address where you can receive it directly?

As CEFE was going bankrupt, Bao sent a confidential letter to Hunter and Robert Biden, Joe Biden's brother. She encouraged them to take the $1.4 million owed the conglomerate's creditors, claiming that it was "nobody's money." Bao mentioned Hudson West, a limited liability partnership connected to Dong Gongwen, Ye's business partner. CEFE transferred money to the Bidens through Hudson West

"Whatever money from Hudson West, please take them, take as much as possible, or figure out a way to spend them for your own benefit," Bao wrote. "It doesn't matter whether the left-over operational fund for Hudson West is labeled as "personal goodwill/loan" or "non-recourse" "recourse" "borrowing/drawing"... just take it and keep as much as possible.

"If you do not take that money, the money would end up become (sic) "nobody's money." ...  "Nobody's money" means they take away whatever you give up to nobody knows where in the system it will end up and whomever stranger might simply take the money for granted. 

So take whatever money you can take, as long as the money is available to claim in the U.S., or you guys ... figure out a way to have the money transferred to the right U. S. account before any restriction levied by Chinese regulators. ... And do not worry about anyone will say anything or reject the idea, as long as whomever helps execute/facilitate the process also benefit or get to keep a bit of something. ... Please note, I did not say anything to you ;)

Apelbaum believes China used Bao to execute a sting against Hunter's family.

"This was almost certainly an official Chinese calculated move to give them future leverage over the Bidens," he wrote. "Legally, Hunter and Jim Biden’s company Hudson West assets should have gone to the CEFC creditors, not to the personal Biden bank accounts." 

If true, that sting would reflect Bao's ultimate purpose.

"Following what seems like traditional honeypot tactics," Apelbaum wrote, "JiaQi was used to sweeten Hunter’s already saccharin-laced business engagement with CEFC. She kept an eye on Hunter from her base in NYC and acted as a cutout between the overseas Chinese officials and the Bidens."

In her latter role, Bao tried to convince Hunter Biden to get his father to run for President. In a letter from March 14, 2019, she refers to Hunter's father as "Uncle Joe," who had yet to decide whether to campaign.

"You need to help Uncle Joe run for President," Bao wrote. "Your father really should run for 2020 for this country."

As she continued, Bao identified herself with the United States:

He will be one of the best presidents in our country's history! I truly think so, especially after reading the wonderful books he wrote. Not only for our country and for American people, his party, also for Beau and for the spirit of your family, he really should run!

Bao even cited Trump, Winston Churchill and Mahathir bin Mohamad, who became Malaysia's prime minister at 92, to deflect concerns about age: "Hey, if Trump can run at his age, why not Uncle Joe?"

Bao's letter contained two attachments containing possible opposition research and campaign talking points. One attachment, "Uncle Joe 2020," continued offering encouragement while criticizing Trump's approach to illegal immigration:

Trump, despite of his age, still acts like a kid and he is so 'blind' (arrogant + ignorant). Shut down the government for his border wall is merely one example of his backward thinking and immaturity. Constructing a border wall is worse than throwing money down the drain. Besides this border wall proposal, if you count this wall as an 'infrastructure', I don’t see how he is helping this country updating our infrastructure ... we need someone who can address these issues smartly and practically. Immigration reform is not a showmanship of photogenic walls...

In offering encouragement, Bao stressed the impression "Uncle Joe" would make in Asia:

People from conservative Asian cultures start to look at our democratic election as a joke or some sort of reality TV drama. We need experienced politicians to bring back some good sense back. Democratic party needs a wise elderly (sic) to unify and to lead.

Bao's second attachment, which included embedded links as research, concentrated on Trump's dealings with China:

If there is anyone who deserve to be scrutinized for doing business with Chinese, it would be Donald Trump:

-- Trump real estate selling American citizenship cheaply to corrupted Chinese officials. He and his rich real estate friends’ “visa for rich” immigration program led rich + legal immigrates (sic) abuse U. S. social welfare (while those who really need the help couldn’t get any)!

-- Trump’s easygoing with Chinese “state-owned enterprise” ZTE amidst opposition from Congress

-- Trump also let China go easy on human rights violation… Plus

-- Trump association with Chinese owner of Florida prostitution parlor 

Further, his trade war with China has been a complete failure thus far, resulting in tremendous loss to Americans (from American farmers/energy companies, to enterprises across spectrum, to average people). As of now, we have the highest trade deficit in 30 years, but ironically China has not changed a single thing on unfair business practice and intellectual property thievery that have been going on for decades!

Bao continued by praising President Barack Obama's administration and the Democratic Party for confronting China: 

By the way, keep in mind, before Trump, it was President Obama and your father’s administration who initiated this effort of curtail (sic) China’s global influence, and it was Democrats’ initiative to fight against Huawei espionage under President Obama and your father’s administration. The critics who first raise concerns about China’s raise (sic) to power and about trade are primarily Democrats.

Bao even used the commonly referenced color associated with the Democrats: "If we were really to play the China card and debate on policy toward China, Blue should have the upper hand."   

Bao concluded by summarizing Trump's supposed vulnerability on China:

Last word on the trade war, we have a hand of good cards to start with, but Trump didn’t use it well, at least not fully utilize it, with his inexperience in diplomacy/international affairs, his arrogance and overconfidence, his poor strategy and subpar execution. I don’t mean to be arrogant, but I really think even I have better ideas than him and could have done much better negotiating for America.  

Six weeks later, on April 25, "Uncle Joe" announced his candidacy.

Interestingly enough, Bao's LinkedIn profile makes no mention of any employment -- even independent consulting -- after July 2019.

How influential did Bao's lobbying prove to be? Perhaps nobody beyond Bao's and the Bidens' circle will ever know. Yet even without that specific knowledge, Apelbaum states the obvious:

As unfathomable as this is, what we have here is a textbook example of a compromise: Chinese intelligence is potentially controlling the family and a would-be US president through financial incentives and honey potting his son, and this has been going on for years, yet, not a peep from the (Justice Department) or the (intelligence community).

In referring to Bao's letters, Apelbaum concludes that the Chinese did to the Bidens what the Democrats claimed the Russians were doing to Trump.

"These and some of the other documents strongly suggest that the Chinese government was engaging in full-blown influence and hands-on election interference on US soil via front companies like CEFC," he wrote, "and that Hunter, Jim, and Joe Biden could have been trapped in these operations."

Biden Refuses to Discuss Family’s Legal Troubles: ‘I’m Proud of My Son’

JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

HARIS ALIC

11 Dec 20205,244

2:05

C-SPAN

Sorry, the video player failed to load.(Error Code: 101102)

Joe Biden is refusing to discuss the legal troubles of his son amid revelations that the Department of Justice is investigating the younger Biden’s “tax affairs.”

Biden, who has been declared president-elect by numerous media outlets, was asked after a press conference on Friday in Wilmington, Delaware, if his son, Hunter, “committed a crime.” The question was in regards to Hunter Biden’s recent admission that he had been informed by the United States Attorney of Delaware that there was an open investigation into his “tax affairs.”

Despite the topic dominating the news cycle in recent days, the former vice president refused to comment on the situation.

“I’m proud of my son,” Biden said, repeating a line he has employed since the story first broke.

While the exact nature of the U.S. Attorney investigation remains unclear, the revelations come more than a month after Fox News reported that Hunter Biden’s laptop had been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a money laundering probe.

The younger Biden has faced questions for some time over his business dealings. In September the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committees released an extensive report detailing numerous instances in which Hunter Biden’s business dealings appeared to overlap with his father’s political influence.

Senate Republicans have pledged to continue investigating the matter once the new Congress opens session in January. Of particular interest for some congressional watchdogs are allegations, first reported by Breitbart News in October, that a top official from a Chinese energy firm offered to provide the Biden “family” a $5 million non-secured, forgivable loan.

The offer was discussed in an email sent to SinoHawk Holdings CEO Tony Bobulinski, a one-time business partner of Hunter Biden. Bobulinski has since begun cooperating with both congressional investigators and federal law enforcement on the topic.


JOE BIDEN: A DEDICATED SERVANT OF WALL STREET, THE RICH, AND BANKSTERS….

 https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/lawyer-joe-bidens-kleptocracy-joe-and.html

The Biden family is notorious for being the crookedest clan not only in Delaware, but in D.C. DANIEL GREENFILED, FELLOW, SHILLMAN JOURNALISM, FREEDOM CENTER

The Hunter Biden laptop unrolls two ragged threads. One is the descent of Joe Biden’s son into new depths of depravity and the other are the foreign investors who bought into Joe Biden Inc.

If they can buy an election for Biden, the theory is, they can buy it for anyone.

Oligarchies always have lots of money even when workers go hungry and lose their homes. And they get that money by seizing the centers of power and consuming the wealth of nations. 

LAWYER JOE BIDEN’S LAWYER INFESTED SWAMP

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-biden-nominated-lawyer-xavier.html

Like Hunter Biden, Becerra has zero experience, in his case with health and welfare issues, having focused on trade, immigration, and law enforcement while in his well-padded government jobs. He's very adept at corruption, though, with scandals everywhere he ever went.

There's undoubtedly a whole raft of scandals linked to his name because he's a big reason why California is what it's become. These scandals are just a sampling and a deep dive will undoubtedly reveal that he's more corruption than actual pol. It's like Joe Biden is surrounding himself with men like himself.

Report: Joe Biden’s Brother Under Federal Investigation for Role in Bankrupt Healthcare Firm

Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo

HARIS ALIC

10 Dec 20205,004

4:31

Joe Biden’s younger brother, James, is

 purportedly under federal

 investigation

 by the United States Attorney in the

 Western District of Pennsylvania for

 his role in a now-bankrupt healthcare

 firm.

On Wednesday, Politico reported that federal prosecutors “have been asking about James Biden’s dealings” with Americore Health, a company that operates rural hospitals .

James Biden, who worked for Americore between 2017 and 2019, supposedly received a personal loan from the $650,000 company before decreasing his day-to-day activities. The personal loan was given to James Biden for helping Americore secure an even bigger bridge loan from a hedge fund run by one of his associates, Michael Lewitt. Court documents, as well as former Americore executives, claim that James Biden convinced the firm’s leadership to sign off on both by promising he would be able to secure larger investments from Middle Eastern contacts thanks to his family’s name.

Americore, which filed for bankruptcy in late-2019, was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) earlier this year as part of an ongoing probe into its finances and business practices. At the time, FBI agents also raided the home of Americore’s CEO, Grant White.

Even before raids, the company’s conduct had come under scrutiny after it was accused of fraud. In July 2019, Michael Frey and his business partner, Dr. Mohannad Azzam, filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming James Biden and Americore’s leadership had promised and failed to line up investors for their rural healthcare enterprise. The suit alleges, James Biden urged the two men to borrow $10 million from a hedge fund run by Lewitt, who was involved in the deal.

“The lawsuit takes direct aim at Biden, painting him as a con artist who uses his ties to his brother … to lure his victims,” the Knoxville News Sentinel reported in August 2019.

According to documents filed with the U.S. District Court, Frey and his wife developed a business model to take over rural hospitals and retrofit them to not only offer traditional hospital care, but also drug addiction and mental health treatment. After incorporating the enterprise as Diverse Medical Management, they brought on Azzam, “who contracted with nursing homes to provide medical care for seniors.”

The business model was lucrative enough that by 2017, Frey and Azzam were actively pitching it to investors and hospitals across the country. One investor particularly taken with the idea was Americore.

At the behest of Americore’s CEO, White, Frey and Azzam were urged to pitch their business plan to rural hospitals in Kentucky. It was at one such meeting the two men met James Biden, who identified himself as a “principal” at Americore.

Not long after their initial encounter, James Biden introduced the men to Lewitt, a hedge fund manager and well-known “credit strategist.” Around this time, Americore made plans to buy Diverse Medical for the sum of $7 million.

Despite the deal, Americore quickly fell behind on its scheduled payments to Frey and Azzam. It was then that James Biden and Lewitt, as detailed in the lawsuit, hatched a plan to oust White and sell Americore along with Diverse Medical to a third company called the Platinum Group. Frey and Azzam appear to have been uncomfortable with the turn the deal took, especially the notion of removing White. The men, though, went along with the plan after being told a payout was “imminent.”

“They repeatedly assured (Frey) that investment capital originating from and flowing through foreign entities was not only certain, but was imminent,” documents filed by Frey and Azzam’s attorney state.

James Biden, himself, is alleged to have tried to pacify the two men’s fears by leaning heavily on his family name and promising that their business model would “play an integral role in health care policy at the highest levels of the United States government.”

It is unclear if the purported investigation that the U.S. Attorney has into James Biden is directly connected to Frey and Azzam’s lawsuit.

Reports of a federal probe, however, come after Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s youngest son, released a statement on Wednesday admitting that his lawyers had been informed the U.S. Attorney in Delaware had opened an investigation into his “tax affairs.”

Report: Hunter Biden’s Connected to ‘Chief Spy of China’ Through His Chinese-American Secretary

IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR PARTICIPANT MEDIA - Hunter Biden, left, and Hugh Evans pose for a photo before the start of a Storytelling for Change: A Decade of Impact panel during Participant Media's Engage, Inspire and Ignite: Conversations about Unleashing Social Good at SXSW in Austin, Texas, Monday, March 10, 2014. …
Jack Dempsey/AP Images
5:12

A business partner Hunter Biden called “the chief spy of China,” assigned the president’s son a Chinese-American secretary who was feeding him opposition research to help Joe Biden’s 2020 election bid after the business venture collapsed in 2018, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

The Daily Mail obtained the information from emails contained in Hunter Biden’s alleged “laptop from hell,” which has become the gift that will not stop giving to critics of President Joe Biden and his troubled son.

“Under the heading ‘Uncle Joe 2020,’ the former assistant encouraged the president’s son to tell his father to ‘lead by example,’ ‘bring back sensibility,’ and emphasize his experience and age as a strength,” the newspaper added.

On Friday, the Daily Mail revealed:

After launching his multi-million-dollar joint venture with CEFC, Hunter was assigned a 29-year-old Chinese-American assistant, JiaQi Bao, who quickly struck up a close and intriguing relationship with her Biden boss.

At first, emails show the New York-based Bao diligently scheduled flights, hotels, and even doctor’s appointments for the president’s son.

But mysteriously, the young assistant also sent him opposition research to help Joe Biden’s 2020 election bid, urged him to take cash from the joint venture’s accounts as the business collapsed and wrote flirty and personal messages and even ended up with Hunter’s military dog tags in her New York apartment – the same tags he can be seen wearing in home-made porn videos he recorded on his laptop.

After the joint venture had dissolved, Bao emailed Hunter with a conspiratorial message encouraging him to help his father run for president and listing talking points to combat criticism of Hunter’s dealings with the Chinese.

After only a year, the business venture between Hunter, his uncle, and the CEFC collapsed in 2018.

A joint report by the Senate Homeland Security and Finance ommittees issued in September 2020 examined Hunter’s business deal with CEFC, noting the company’s deep ties to the communist Chinese government. It determined that the millions of dollars transferred from the firm to Hunter and his uncle “raise criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns.”

Hunter’s secretary, Bao, appeared very invested in having Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.

In a March 2019 email to Hunter, Bao told Hunter, “You need to help Uncle Joe run for president. Your father should really run for 2020 for this country. He will be one of the best presidents in our country’s history.”

Echoing China’s foreign policy, Bao reportedly promoted negative stories about Trump for Hunter to use, “including allegations of selling citizenship to corrupt Chinese officials, his alleged links to a Chinese-owned Florida “prostitution parlor,” and letting human rights violations slide in negotiations with China.

Bao also took issue with Trump’s trade war with China, reportedly lambasting it as “a complete failure thus far, resulting in tremendous loss to Americans.”

Critics expected Joe Biden to be soft towards China, and Beijing appeared to favor him over Trump.

The Daily Mail reported that it is unclear whether Bao knew of Huner’s business partner’s alleged links to the Chinese intelligence services at the time because she has not returned requests for comment on this story.

Still, it acknowledged:

After partnering with Chinese oil giant CEFC in the multi-million-dollar deal, Bao was appointed as his secretary and assistant, acting as a go-between for his Chinese business partners, translating documents and performing clerical work for Hunter in the joint venture.

Hunter did not have any problem believing his new business partner at CEFC was linked to the Chinese intelligence agencies, describing Patrick Ho to a friend in an audio recording on his laptop as the “spy chief of China.”

In December 2020, Hunter admitted that he is currently the subject of an FBI investigation, allegedly for tax crimes. However, some news reports suggest the investigators may also be scrutinizing his dealings overseas.

The business venture between Hunter and CEFC collapsed in 2018, just a year after the president’s son and brother, uncle Jim, joined the deal under the impression it would yield billions of dollars.

After Hunter called his business partner “the chief spy in China,” U.S. law enforcement reportedly surveilled the Chinese businessman later as a “foreign intelligence threat” before his conviction for bribery in 2018.

“Ho was suspected of working with the Chinese intelligence services and had been monitored by federal law enforcement under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” the Daily Mail noted, citing court documents.

The Daily Mail added:

As Hunter’s joint venture with the Chinese began to crumble that month amid the arrests of its two leaders, Bao wrote one of her most surprising emails encouraging him to raid the coffers of one of Hunter and CEFC’s joint corporate vehicles called Hudson West.

At one point, she even offered for Hunter not to pay her for her “secretary” work.


Hunter Biden May Have His Own Chinese Spy Scandal

Katie Pavlich
|
|
Posted: May 08, 2021 11:30 AM
Hunter Biden May Have His Own Chinese Spy Scandal

Source: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" shows he had a "flirty" relationship with his secretary, who worked for a Chinese Communist Party company where he conducted business. The Daily Mail has the details: 

After launching his multi-million-dollar joint venture with CEFC, Hunter was assigned a 29-year-old Chinese-American assistant, JiaQi Bao, who quickly struck up a close and intriguing relationship with her Biden boss.

At first, emails show the New York-based Bao diligently scheduled flights, hotels and even doctor's appointments for the president's son.

But mysteriously, the young assistant also sent him opposition research to help Joe Biden's 2020 election bid, urged him to take cash from the joint venture's accounts as the business collapsed and wrote flirty and personal messages and even ended up with Hunter's military dog tags in her New York apartment – the same tags he can be seen wearing in home-made porn videos he recorded on his laptop.

After partnering with Chinese oil giant CEFC in the multi-million-dollar deal, Bao was appointed as his secretary and assistant, acting as a go-between for his Chinese business partners, translating documents and performing clerical work for Hunter in the joint venture.

According to Bao's LinkedIn page, she has worked as an analyst and assistant in finance and private equity in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and New York since 2011.

As CEFC started to collapse, Hunter Biden's assistant encouraged him to withdraw money from the accounts held by the company. Further, the company's Secretary General was known as the "spy chief of China." 

Hunter and Joe Biden's brother Jim partnered with CEFC in 2017, in a deal that was meant to generate billions of dollars and create a string of oil and gas projects in the Middle East and Europe.

But the joint venture collapsed the following year when CEFC's secretary general Patrick Ho was arrested and later convicted of bribery in a US federal prosecution.

Ho was suspected of working with the Chinese intelligence services, and had been monitored by federal law enforcement under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, court documents revealed.

Hunter remains under investigation by the FBI, but his attorneys maintain he did nothing illegal.


Despite Joe Biden promising voters his family would not be involved in foreign business dealings while he was in the White House, Hunter Biden still owns stake in another Chinese company. 

"No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they are a cabinet member, will, in fact, have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country," then former Vice President Joe Biden said in October 2019. 

Fitton: America Needs to Know the Truth About Biden Family’s Corruption

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images

TOM FITTON

3 Feb 2021262

4:51

The Biden scandals didn’t disappear when Joe Biden entered the Oval Office, as I wrote in this op-ed for The Washington Times:

A president takes office amidst charges of family corruption and shady business dealings with a country connected to interfering in the very election that put him in the White House. Sound familiar?

The false narrative that Democrats concocted to hobble the Trump administration four years ago is now the real deal with Joe Biden and his family. And unlike President Trump, who faced unprecedented institutional resistance and Deep State resistance, President Biden can likely count on the Justice Department and the media to allow him to escape meaningful scrutiny.

Judicial Watch recently started a petition at Change.org asking the Department of Justice immediately to appoint a special counsel to investigate Biden family dealings in China, Ukraine and other countries. There is substantial evidence, from documents and witness statements, that the Biden family, including President Joe Biden, may have been involved in criminal activity with foreign entities tied to Ukraine and China. In just a few days the petition has garnered nearly 200,000 signatures. 

Judicial Watch uncovered documents that show even as far back as the Obama administration Russia-linked media in Ukraine were “trolling” Joe Biden over “his son’s business.” Mr. Biden’s son Hunter has acknowledged that he is the target of an FBI criminal investigation. Any investigation should involve alleged money laundering, influence peddling and tax violations among other shady activities.

A special counsel is required because the Justice Department and its FBI are conflicted in investigating any matters that could implicate the president and/or his immediate family in criminal activity. As Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said recently, “if there were ever circumstances that create a conflict of interest and call for a special counsel, that’s here.” Justice Department regulations that were abused to appoint a special counsel to harass then-President Trump actually do fairly apply to the Biden situation. A special counsel is required by Justice regulations when:

(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and

(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.

The matter is urgent. Americans just learned that communist China was actively involved in the 2020 presidential election. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a letter transmitted to Congress, concluded that “based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure — that the People’s Republic of China sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.”

Chinese efforts to interfere in the 2020 election might have been better known before election days but for Deep State resistance. Intelligence Community Ombudsman Barry Zulauf found that CIA analysts were reluctant to reveal China’s malign actions because they were opposed to the Trump administration, and were “saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.” In fact, “strong efforts” were made last summer to suppress analysts who wanted to expose the full range of Chinese efforts to swing the election to Mr. Biden.

We are already seeing China indirectly benefitting from Biden policies. Cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline will divert Canadian oil west to the petroleum-hungry People’s Republic. Re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement gives political cover to China’s excessively polluting dirty coal industry, in which Hunter Biden is heavily invested. Mr. Biden’s State Department on Day One removed a page on its web site that contained a comprehensive assessment of the threats China poses to the U.S. and its allies, and an emboldened Beijing slapped outrageous sanctions on outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and 27 other former Trump officials. Does China have corrupt leverage over President Biden?

Given the years of investigations costing millions of dollars to delve into fake Russia collusion accusations against Trump world, the American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.

 

Exclusive — Sen. Bill Hagerty: ‘China Is Singing All the Way to the Bank’ Thanks to Joe Biden’s Policies


MATTHEW BOYLE


Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) told Breitbart News exclusively that the Chinese Communist Party is “singing all the way to the bank” thanks to President Joe Biden’s various policies in his first two weeks in office.

Hagerty, in an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel, said that Biden’s orders closing down the Keystone XL pipeline and shutting down leases for drilling on federal lands embolden China and undermine the United States.

“Broadly look at what the Biden Administration is doing on energy,” Hagerty said. “By canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, Biden is giving a huge gift to China. Look at what it did to Canada. If Canada can’t move their oil through the XL pipeline, they’re going to sell it to China. Well, guess what? China now has a huge store of oil headed its way courtesy of the Biden administration. And this Paris Climate Accord that they want to get back into? That’s going to put an immediate burden on the U.S. economy. China is not going to have to comply anywhere in the near term. Theirs was the only economy that grew last year. Ours didn’t. They’re going to put more burden on us while China is singing all the way to the bank thanks to the Biden administration. So we have some real reasons to be concerned.”

The Chinese have another friend in Biden’s selection for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas Greenfield, Hagerty said. A speech that Greenfield gave to a Confucius Institute event in 2019 that surfaced last week saw her praising the Chinese Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative in Africa. Hagerty argued that CCP Belt and Road efforts compromised the man who would become the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, by trapping his native Ethiopia in debt.

“Look at this U.N. representative that they put forward, Linda Thomas Greenfield, she clearly doesn’t get it,” Hagerty said. “She’s praising China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Africa. Look no further than Ethiopia and what happened there with this Belt and Road Initiative. When Dr. Tedros was the health minister and the foreign minister, the Ethiopian government took billions of dollars in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. Then, when it was necessary, China had Dr. Tedros running the WHO and he stepped right up and parroted their line and helped cover up the pandemic when they wanted him to do it. This is textbook debt trap diplomacy, they’re using their influence for nefarious means, and I cannot imagine a U.N. representative who does not understand that.”

Asked about the speech and whether it could jeopardize Greenfield’s confirmation prospects in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats have a narrow majority in the 50-50 split chamber when Vice President Kamala Harris v0otes to break the tie, Hagerty said he thinks she could.

“I think this speech and that it’s come to light—given at a Confucius Institute no less, she was paid by the Chinese to give this speech—the naïveté that her position underscores is extremely disturbing and I think it’s going to make it very difficult for her to get confirmed,” Hagerty said. “If you think about 2019 as you mentioned, the whole world knew about China was doing with the Belt and Road. You and I talked about what they did in Sri Lanka with that deep water port. They put a tremendous amount of debt on a small country, Sri Lanka, built a second deep water port that the country didn’t need, they foreclosed on it before it was even finished and they never even moved the Chinese workers, they speak Chinese at that port right now, they operate under Chinese law, and it’s along one of the busiest most strategic shipping lanes in the world. They know what they’re doing. They’re going into these small countries and like I mentioned with Ethiopia and they’re pushing their influence. They’re putting a tremendous amount of debt, which gives them leverage. For her not to understand or see that is deeply concerning.”

While there are definitely policies, comments, and actions from Biden himself on down through several of his top administration officials signaling a softening towards Beijing, Hagerty did say there are some in the Biden administration, like Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who seem to understand the threat.

“It’s a mixed bag. I think Secretary Blinken does have a much more clear-eyed view about what’s happening than most members of the Biden administration,” Hagerty said. “He and I talked about this at length. He’s acknowledged Secretary Pompeo’s designation of the Chinese as committing genocide with the Uyghurs there. That’s correct. Secretary Blinken was right to acknowledge that. He was also right to acknowledge the Trump administration largely got it right on China. I was pleased at the inauguration, the Biden Administration invited the Taiwanese rep to come to the inauguration—that sent a strong message, even stronger frankly is sending the USS Teddy Roosevelt into the waters off of Taiwan to push back against Chinese military aggression there with the Taiwanese and that incredibly important ally there. But if you look at it more broadly, I don’t think Biden gets it. You look back to the campaign, he said ‘oh China is not our competition come on man!’”

Hagerty on Wednesday introduced a series of amendments to the budget resolution in the Senate, including some specifically targeting the CCP. He and his office are hoping for bipartisan support behind these measures, including ones that would “end the inappropriate classification of China by international organizations that gives China an advantage over America and enhance accountability at those organizations” and “ensure that the United States leads other nations in holding China accountable for engaging in genocide and crimes against humanity with respect to Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Province of China.” These are the first amendments Hagerty, a freshman senator just elected in November, has offered as a U.S. Senator. Others include protections for American workers from open borders and amnesty immigration policies, efforts to preserve former President Donald Trump’s wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, and support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

In his interview on Breitbart News Saturday, Hagerty again ripped the Biden administration for its energy orders, saying that they will empower the Chinese Communist Party

“The first and the most immediate concern is the fact that Biden is killing jobs. He’s killing American jobs at a time when we’re trying to recover from a pandemic-driven recession,” he said. “Who would do this? He’s doing exactly that. Energy independence was one of the biggest strategic victories of the Trump administration. I worked very hard to get the Japanese to invest in infrastructure to become an importer of U.S. energy. We would certainly want our allies to be utilizing U.S. energy rather than Russian energy or energy from other nations that don’t have our best interests at heart. That was a very powerful strategic tool for us, a very powerful strategic step. Biden wants to make us now dependent on nations again that don’t have our best interests at heart. He wants to make us energy dependent on foreign countries and wants to get us the oil we would otherwise be doing business here lowering our costs of doing business, lowering our output costs, lowering the cost of gas at the pump for American citizens—he wants to raise that price and send the benefit to China because the Chinese are going to get the oil that the Canadians will no longer be selling to us. This is ludicrous. It’s killing American jobs. It’s damaging our economy. It’s strengthening our strategic competitors and weakening us in the process.”

Overall, Hagerty said, the Biden Administration policies amount to an effort by the Democrats to again silence the so-called “forgotten man” that led to former President Donald Trump’s rise in 2016.

“It is just amazing. That’s why the Trump administration and our policies toward places like China, toward security, toward things like immigration, resonated so much within America and certainly within my home state of Tennessee,” Hagerty said. “The forgotten man, forgotten woman, the forgotten citizen has been extremely concerned about this. This amnesty program, not only is it unfair to our workers, it’s only going to invite more and more illegal immigration because they’re moving the wrong direction on border security as well. They’re just going to invite more of this cheating and more downward pressure on the American worker. This is absolutely a wrongheaded policy and as you say we’ve got this COVID pandemic to put behind us yet they’re focused on all of these policies. By encouraging and even creating an incentive for more people to flood in across that border rather than securing it, we will have an even harder time combatting the pandemic and getting out of it.”

LISTEN TO SEN. BILL HAGERTY ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:

 

Tucker Carlson Delivers a Monologue So Damning That President Trump Shares It, Includes Explosive Hunter Biden News

By Bonchie | Dec 08, 2020 9:00 AM ET

AP Photo/Richard Drew

Tucker Carlson has always been known for his hard-hitting monologues, sometimes stretching 20 minutes into his show. And while some hit closer to home than others, last night’s was so impactful that Presides an explosive video that was eventually deleted from social media by China, and it exposes perhaps thent Trump himself shared it.

It involve most dangerous threat America faces.

(also see Amazing Video of Chinese Government Official Speaking to Group About Joe Biden Winning the Election)

pic.twitter.com/reenwuelHY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2020

If you watch the above clip, what you’ll see is a Beijing-based professor bragging about China’s ability to settle affairs with the United States in their favor. But it’s his admission that that’s only possible because the CCP has people placed he calls “old friends” in upper positions of power across the influence sectors in the country. He’s obviously talking about government inroads, but he also specifically mentions someone being the vice president at a major Wall Street firm. At another point, he notes an American woman who now has dual Chinese citizenship and lives part of the year in Beijing. Why that’s important is that the communist nation does not allow dual citizenship. You do the math on that.

Things got more damning, though. The professor goes on to talk specifically about President Trump and how he’s blown up China’s ability to control American interests and bend them in their favor. The trade war is specifically mentioned here, with it being noted that Wall Street “tried to help” but couldn’t do much because Trump held an adversarial position against the financial institutions in question. Unsurprisingly, we hear about how easy Barack Obama’s administration was to manipulate in comparison. The professor even brags about having so many people near the levers of power during that time, but they couldn’t “fix Trump” in his words.

That’s when things get really explosive, though. Carlson plays one final clip in which the professor, obviously relieved, says that now Joe Biden has been elected. That leads him to say that Trump has claimed Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, ran some kind of “global foundation.” He then makes a stunning admission that yes, the Chinese are the ones who funded that and that there are many “deals” in all of it.

As Carlson quips, now you know exactly why we the mainstream media and social media immediately sought to quash the Hunter Biden story with such force. The Chinese have compromised so many people at the top, including in our media structure, that the story simply couldn’t be allowed to live despite it being true. And keep in mind, if there was ever a video like this targeting Eric Trump or another Trump family member, for example, it would be the lead story on every network for months as proof of foreign interference.

The segment ends with an assertion that Joe Biden has been compromised, and that’s exactly correct. There hasn’t been a more China-friendly politician in the last 30 years than Biden. With his probable swearing-in on the horizon, the communists are rejoicing. That should tell you just how big a mistake it was to let him anywhere near the presidency.

Senate Committees Drop New Report on Hunter Biden, Alarming Connections to China

 

Katie Pavlich

The Republican led Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committees published a new and lengthy report Tuesday evening further detailing national security concerns related to Hunter Biden's shady foreign dealings in China and Ukraine. 

"The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) and the Senate Committee on Finance undertook this investigation into potential conflicts of interest, and the involvement of the Biden family in foreign business ventures while Joe Biden was vice president, following allegations that the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy could have been affected by Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Burisma, and that family members may have improperly sought to benefit from their relationship with the vice president," the report states. 

The Committees found the relationship between the Biden family, through Hunter and former Vice President Joe Biden's brother James, is deeply connected to the Chinese Communist Party. 

"Hunter Biden and Devon Archer engaged in numerous financial transactions with Chinese nationals who had deep connections to the Communist Chinese government. These Chinese nationals included Ye Jianming, founder of CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd (CEFC) and chairman of the board for its subsidiary, the China Energy Fund Committee (CE Fund). They also included Gongwen Dong, who was Ye Jianming’s associate and reportedly executed transactions for his companies. Ye’s connections to the Communist government are extensive and, as explained below, he has been previous affiliations with the People’s Liberation Army. Based on the information received by the Committees, Ye was also financially connected to Vice President Biden’s brother, James Biden. Thus, there exists a vast web of corporate connections and financial transactions between and among the Biden family and Chinese nationals," the report states. "Hunter Biden has extensive connections to Chinese businesses and Chinese foreign nationals that are linked to the Communist government. Those contacts bore financial fruit when his father was vice president and after he left office."

"The records acquired by the Committees show consistent, significant and extensive financial connections among and between Hunter Biden, James Biden, Sara Biden, Devon Archer, and Chinese nationals connected to the Communist regime and PLA as well as other foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds. These connections and the vast amount of money transferred among and between them don’t just raise conflicts of interest concerns, they raise criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns. The Committees will continue to evaluate the evidence in their possession," the report concludes. 

Meanwhile, a Chinese professor in Beijing boasted this week that the Chinese Communist Party now has connections at the highest levels and within the most elite circles of American government. 

 

Why China’s future does not look bright

Up until recently I felt that China’s economic growth was unstoppable and that it would indeed surpass the U.S. and keep going into a bright future.

However, researching more, I concluded that healthy land use for agriculture (such as organic farming) and minimizing industrial pollution are even more important than economic prosperity. China doesn't have them; we do.

The dysfunctional running of the centralized banking system by the CCP is also major handicap for the economy.

Now, if you merely compare a dollar's worth of the Chinese economy to that of the U.S., it seems that China is doing rather well, being second in the world, and net exporting about $400 billion a year in 2020.

IMF data from 2018 show that China’s debt to GDP ratio is 55.36%, while U.S. debt to GDP ratio is 106.7% or almost twice as large as China’s.

Total wealth in 2020 of the U.S. is $105,990 billion and China is $63,827 billion or about half that of the U.S.

However, I am beginning to feel sorry for the Chinese people who are being victimized by the corporatist or state capitalism which is rapidly turning Chinese land into a toxic cesspool, with devastating health impacts on the people.

It's short duration profits at the expense of public health. It is no wonder that the U.S., E.U., and Japan do not allow the import of some Chinese foodstuffs which contain unhealthy additives, dangerous drug residues, and unsanitary characteristics. Crop pollution is not prominently mentioned in the news. but many Chinese citizens have little confidence in the food which they consume.

The banking sector is terribly inefficient because it is under centralized CCP control. There's this from Foreign Policy (subscription):

State owned enterprises are inefficient financial behemoths. The large-scale privatization of state-owned enterprises is a good place to start. These inefficient behemoths control nearly $30 trillion in assets and consume roughly 80 percent of the country’s available bank credit, but they contribute only between 23 and 28 percent of GDP. The efficiency gains that would be unleashed by reining in the state’s direct role in the economy would be more than enough to compensate for the loss of the U.S. market.

There's this, too, from The 21st Century:

China‘s Growing Agriculture Crisis

F. William Engdahl on 2020-09-07

For the past months the Peoples’ Republic of China has been subject to one after the other devastating shocks to its agriculture sector. A deadly outbreak of African Swine Fever that halved China’s huge pig herds in 2019, was followed by infestation from a plague of fall armyworms (FAW) which reached China in December, 2018 and now threaten China’s corn belt.

Now the worst floods in some 60 years is wiping out major rice and other crops in central China along the Yangtze and other rivers. Food Security is one of six national priorities for national security. President Xi Jinping has just issued a call to citizens not to waste food or face penalties, a sign that the depth of the food security threat is far worse than thought.

Not mentioned is the fact that pollution from pesticides, artificial fertilizers, and toxic runoff into rivers is making many crops not that healthy for human consumption so the long term prognosis for agriculture is not that rosy.

Industrial pollution

Perhaps half of all Chinese—a staggering 600 million people—drink water that is contaminated by human or animal waste. These people are subjected to waterborne disease and a myriad of human health concerns related to the use of polluted water.

China’s major river systems exhibit the scope of the problem. Perhaps 70 percent of their water is so polluted that it has been deemed unsafe for human contact. In addition to untreated sewage released into these waterways, high-growth industries such as textiles, paper manufacturing, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals account for a large share of this pollution.

At dumps, toxic runoff often percolates through the earth to contaminate groundwater aquifers. Untreated mining and industrial waste leaves some waters contaminated with such high metal content that they literally run red with rust-colored water. Lead levels have been recorded in Chinese rivers that are some 44 times greater than accepted norms.

China is paying dearly for supplying the world with low-cost manufactured goods and the long duration health of its people is in serious danger. I despise the CCP for its disregard of human rights and tyrannical rule. I now despise the CCP because it is screwing the long duration health of Chinese citizens and turning the country into a toxic cesspool. If you don’t have your health, then all the money in the world won’t buy it back. To me China’s future does not look bright at all.


Report: Hunter Biden’s Connected to ‘Chief Spy of China’ Through His Chinese-American Secretary

IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR PARTICIPANT MEDIA - Hunter Biden, left, and Hugh Evans pose for a photo before the start of a Storytelling for Change: A Decade of Impact panel during Participant Media's Engage, Inspire and Ignite: Conversations about Unleashing Social Good at SXSW in Austin, Texas, Monday, March 10, 2014. …
Jack Dempsey/AP Images
5:12

A business partner Hunter Biden called “the chief spy of China,” assigned the president’s son a Chinese-American secretary who was feeding him opposition research to help Joe Biden’s 2020 election bid after the business venture collapsed in 2018, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

The Daily Mail obtained the information from emails contained in Hunter Biden’s alleged “laptop from hell,” which has become the gift that will not stop giving to critics of President Joe Biden and his troubled son.

“Under the heading ‘Uncle Joe 2020,’ the former assistant encouraged the president’s son to tell his father to ‘lead by example,’ ‘bring back sensibility,’ and emphasize his experience and age as a strength,” the newspaper added.

On Friday, the Daily Mail revealed:

After launching his multi-million-dollar joint venture with CEFC, Hunter was assigned a 29-year-old Chinese-American assistant, JiaQi Bao, who quickly struck up a close and intriguing relationship with her Biden boss.

At first, emails show the New York-based Bao diligently scheduled flights, hotels, and even doctor’s appointments for the president’s son.

But mysteriously, the young assistant also sent him opposition research to help Joe Biden’s 2020 election bid, urged him to take cash from the joint venture’s accounts as the business collapsed and wrote flirty and personal messages and even ended up with Hunter’s military dog tags in her New York apartment – the same tags he can be seen wearing in home-made porn videos he recorded on his laptop.

After the joint venture had dissolved, Bao emailed Hunter with a conspiratorial message encouraging him to help his father run for president and listing talking points to combat criticism of Hunter’s dealings with the Chinese.

After only a year, the business venture between Hunter, his uncle, and the CEFC collapsed in 2018.

A joint report by the Senate Homeland Security and Finance ommittees issued in September 2020 examined Hunter’s business deal with CEFC, noting the company’s deep ties to the communist Chinese government. It determined that the millions of dollars transferred from the firm to Hunter and his uncle “raise criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns.”

Hunter’s secretary, Bao, appeared very invested in having Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.

In a March 2019 email to Hunter, Bao told Hunter, “You need to help Uncle Joe run for president. Your father should really run for 2020 for this country. He will be one of the best presidents in our country’s history.”

Echoing China’s foreign policy, Bao reportedly promoted negative stories about Trump for Hunter to use, “including allegations of selling citizenship to corrupt Chinese officials, his alleged links to a Chinese-owned Florida “prostitution parlor,” and letting human rights violations slide in negotiations with China.

Bao also took issue with Trump’s trade war with China, reportedly lambasting it as “a complete failure thus far, resulting in tremendous loss to Americans.”

Critics expected Joe Biden to be soft towards China, and Beijing appeared to favor him over Trump.

The Daily Mail reported that it is unclear whether Bao knew of Huner’s business partner’s alleged links to the Chinese intelligence services at the time because she has not returned requests for comment on this story.

Still, it acknowledged:

After partnering with Chinese oil giant CEFC in the multi-million-dollar deal, Bao was appointed as his secretary and assistant, acting as a go-between for his Chinese business partners, translating documents and performing clerical work for Hunter in the joint venture.

Hunter did not have any problem believing his new business partner at CEFC was linked to the Chinese intelligence agencies, describing Patrick Ho to a friend in an audio recording on his laptop as the “spy chief of China.”

In December 2020, Hunter admitted that he is currently the subject of an FBI investigation, allegedly for tax crimes. However, some news reports suggest the investigators may also be scrutinizing his dealings overseas.

The business venture between Hunter and CEFC collapsed in 2018, just a year after the president’s son and brother, uncle Jim, joined the deal under the impression it would yield billions of dollars.

After Hunter called his business partner “the chief spy in China,” U.S. law enforcement reportedly surveilled the Chinese businessman later as a “foreign intelligence threat” before his conviction for bribery in 2018.

“Ho was suspected of working with the Chinese intelligence services and had been monitored by federal law enforcement under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” the Daily Mail noted, citing court documents.

The Daily Mail added:

As Hunter’s joint venture with the Chinese began to crumble that month amid the arrests of its two leaders, Bao wrote one of her most surprising emails encouraging him to raid the coffers of one of Hunter and CEFC’s joint corporate vehicles called Hudson West.

At one point, she even offered for Hunter not to pay her for her “secretary” work.