On this episode of China Uncensored,
China gets feisty with Feinstein.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored,
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
This is Devin Nunes,
a US congressman from California.
He’s been working to derail
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Now imagine what would happen
if the FBI discovered that a staffer for Nunes,
who had worked for him for 20 years, had been spying for Russia.
And all Nunes did was quietly fire him and then keep it under wraps.
I think people would freak out.
Now, this is Dianne Feinstein, a US Senator from California.
Turns out, one of her long-time staffers was allegedly a spy—
for the Chinese Communist Party.
“The Chinese spy was Feinstein’s driver for 20 years,
who also served as a gofer in her Bay Area office,
and who was a liaison to the Asian American community.
He even attended Chinese consulate functions for the Senator.”
Five years ago,
the FBI came to Feinstein with this information,
and she quietly dismissed the guy.
No one else on her staff even knew.
It only came out recently,
thanks to this brief blurb in a Politico article.
Now this was at a time when Feinstein
was the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Not to worry.
“A spokesperson for Feinstein said...
no Feinstein staffer in California
has ever had a security clearance.”
Oh, well that is a relief.
A possible Chinese spy was close to a US senator
while she sat on a sensitive intelligence committee,
but his lack of security clearance means
he definitely never heard anything
at any point that could be a political advantage
to the Chinese regime.
Whew.
It’s not clear right now how much this alleged spy
was able to communicate with his handlers,
and the FBI apparently didn’t think
they had enough evidence to prosecute.
In fact, this San Francisco Chronicle story makes it seem like
he was more of an accidental spy...
who thought he was just talking to a friend,
who happened to work for the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
This is why I always say, never make any friends.
Remember that, kids.
But you know what?
The spying part...isn’t even the most interesting part of this story.
We’re just getting started.
See, the Chinese Communist Party has been working hard
to influence important people in the United States,
to guide our country on a more “China friendly” path.
China experts have called this strategy “elite capture.”
Getting the wealthy and influential on your side.
But you can’t just capture elites by luring them into
a trap set with fine wine and caviar.
So how does the Chinese Communist Party do it?
Take a look at this Hudson Institute report,
The Chinese Communist Party's Foreign Interference Operations.
Under the section, “China’s Willing American Enablers,” it says,
“For everyone from businesspeople to politicians,
the promise of market access to China....
is a powerful incentive to work with the Chinese government
and acquiesce to its broader agenda.”
In other words, money.
I know, what a surprise.
It turns out Senator Dianne Feinstein is
a perfect example of elite capture.
She knew that the Chinese government was taking an interest in her.
The FBI warned her of that back in 1997.
Why would the Chinese regime be interested?
Here’s former FBI agent Josh Harp,
who used to run counter-espionage for the FBI in the Bay Area,
talking about Dianne Feinstein.
“You know anybody who sits on the House Intelligence Committee,
they all have a top secret security clearance and even higher,
and those people are all prime targets of opportunity.”
And Feinstein didn’t exactly
make it difficult for Chinese officials
to get close to her.
Now I’m not saying Dianne Feinstein is a spy
or that she did something illegal.
I’m not accusing her of that.
But I am saying, records show Feinstein had
very close dealings with the Chinese Communist Party.
And in particular,
everyone’s favorite mass murder and natterjack toad—
Jiang Zemin!
And the two of them made sweet music together.
I wonder what future dictators sing at karaoke.
What’s that, Shelley?
“One Day When We Were Young”?
Well, that’s disappointing.
I thought it would be something like “Highway to Hell.”
Or at least “We are the Champions.”
So how did this duet begin, you ask?
Well, Feinstein was the mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988.
And the Chinese Communist Party is very interested in keeping
close ties to San Francisco’s Chinese community.
As the LA Times wrote,
Mayor Feinstein had a close relationship with Jiang Zemin,
who was then the mayor and party secretary of Shanghai.
In 1980, Mayor Feinstein made Shanghai the sister city of San Francisco.
It was the first sister city relationship the US had with China.
In fact, the two cities are still sisters to this day,
thanks to Feinstein and Jiang’s “lasting ties.”
But back when San Francisco’s sister relationship with Shanghai began,
Feinstein was just a mayor,
and so was Jiang Zemin.
Jiang didn’t become the leader of China until after 1989,
when he supported killing all those students in Tiananmen Square.
Ok, I know that sounds bad.
But, as Feinstein put it in 2010:
That whole Tiananmen Square incident is in the past.
And one learns from the past.
And China has learned a lesson.
And that lesson is, brainwash the next generation
into forgetting it ever happened.
That’s not a joke.
That’s what they did.
Anway, Feinstein and Jiang’s relationship began
in the simpler times of the 1980s,
well before the alleged Chinese spy in her office,
and definitely before Jiang would rise to power
and launch a systematic campaign
to kill Falun Gong practitioners for their organs.
Apparently, “Feinstein became friends with Shanghai’s mayor,
Jiang Zemin,
and the two visited each other regularly;
Jiang once spent Thanksgiving in San Francisco”
with Feinstein and her husband.
Why, Jiang even danced with Feinstein
during one of those visits.
Ok, dancing and singing together is one thing,
but did Feinstein’s friendship with Jiang affect
how she treated US-China relations?
Well, back in the 1990s, a lot of US officials
were reluctant to normalize trade with China
because of that whole Tiananmen Square whoopsie-daisy.
Congress had to re-approve trade with China every year.
But Feinstein wanted to change that.
In 1996 she wrote this op-ed for the LA Times called,
“Most-Favored Status Is Not a Perk.”
It’s not?
I’m pretty sure becoming most favored anything is a perk.
Anyway, she wrote,
“We should grant most-favored-nation status
to China on a permanent basis and get past
the annual dance that is proving to be extraordinarily divisive.”
Also, remember,
this was only seven years after the Tiananmen Massacre.
Surely the Communist Party had completely changed by then!
Well, according to Feinstein, it had.
“The positive changes in China have been dramatic.
Chinese society continues to open up
with looser ideological controls,
freer access to outside sources of information
and increased media reporting.
More people in China vote for their leadership on the local level
than do Americans.”
Um...you realize that the local “voting” doesn’t count
when the Communist Party picks all the candidates, right?
Fortunately for Feinstein,
she wasn’t alone in her support for China...
and Jiang Zemin.
There was also this guy.
Then-president Bill Clinton wanted China
in the World Trade Organization.
Or, you could say, American corporations
wanted access to the China market,
and Bill Clinton did his best to represent
his well-funded constituents.
But when trade talks with China started going sour,
in August 1999,
the White House sent Feinstein there meet with Jiang Zemin
and encourage him to resume negotiations.
And eventually, Clinton and Feinstein successfully got China
to join the World Trade Organization.
And now—as you know—
China plays by all the international rules,
has a vibrant democracy,
respects human rights, and...haha, no.
It was a total failure.
Although that’s not how some see it.
Senator Feinstein told the Washington Post in 2010
that China has gotten soooo much better.
She said, “There was originally
this kind of anti-communist view of China.
That’s changing...
China is a socialist country but one that is
increasingly becoming capitalistic.”
Well, I guess selling people’s organs for profit is capitalistic.
And that kind of optimism spreads to the people around Feinstein.
I mean, besides that alleged Chinese spy.
In 2011, her former aide,
Peter Ruffo joined the Chinese telecom giant ZTE
as their first in-house political lobbyist.
Ruffo is still ZTE’s lobbyist.
Even though the House Intelligence Committee
has been warning for 6 years that ZTE
poses a national security threat to the US.
But it’s not just Feinstein’s former staff who
are enamored with totally-not-communist China.
This may shock you,
but while Dianne Feinstein
was arguing for more trade with China,
her husband Richard Blum was making
an awful lot of money...
in China.
“In 1986, Feinstein and Jiang designated several corporate entities
for fostering commercial relations,
one named Shanghai Pacific Partners.
Feinstein’s husband served as a director.”
That project also involved state-run Shanghai Investment Trust Corp.
And it “was cited by Chinese officials as a testament
to the friendly business ties between Shanghai
and San Francisco that Feinstein had initiated.”
And business grew.
In May 1994, in a speech delivered on the Senate floor,
Feinstein urged President Clinton to increase
favorable trade relations with China—
at the same time her husband Blum planned to invest
up to $150 million there on behalf of several clients.
Now, both Feinstein and her husband said that his businesses
did not benefit from her China relationships.
And that he had his own relationships in China.
But their behavior still raised eyebrows.
“Feinstein took three trips between 1995 and 1997 to China,
in addition to trips earlier in her mayoral service,
to meet with top communist officials,
including Jiang [Zemin].
Blum often attended the meetings with her,
an arrangement the Times described as ‘unusual.’”
In one instance, in 1996, Jiang Zemin took Feinstein
and her husband to the home of Mao Zedong.
They were the first foreigners to see his bedroom and swimming pool.
It was very historic.
Like, if you got to see Stalin’s old bedroom and swimming pool,
the first thought on your mind would be how historic it was.
All these private meetings with Jiang Zemin
and the couple were very good for Blum’s business,
according to American experts in Chinese business practices.
Now a spokesperson for Feinstein said that by 1999,
her husband had gotten rid of his last holdings in mainland China.
Which is good because at the time she was really pushing
for China’s entry into the WTO,
and that would be a conflict of interest, right?
Anyway, I think we should totally trust Feinstein
when she said her husband had gotten rid of
his mainland China holdings.
Because technically, maybe it was true.
It’s just that his Newbridge Capital was investing
$400 million dollars in East Asia,
and at least $90 million of that was invested in companies
whose profits were pegged to the “burgeoning mainland China market.”
And several of those companies were partly owned
or created by the Chinese government.
In 2004, Newbridge Capital bought an 18% stake
in Shenzhen Development bank.
Now again, I’m not accusing Feinstein of doing
anything that’s technically illegal.
In fact, as a senator,
she has to publicly disclose her assets.
But her friendship with Jiang,
and her husband’s business dealings in China,
are exactly the kinds of messy
financial and interpersonal connections
that the Chinese Communist Party loves to exploit.
In recent years,
Feinstein seems to have carried on her tradition
of supporting the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2010, when Obama sold weapons to Taiwan for its national defense,
she opposed it, calling it a “a substantial irritant”
in the US relationship with China.
And in 2015, Feinstein opposed Senator Ted Cruz’s bill
that would have renamed the street in front of the Chinese embassy
after activist and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.
She said at the time,
“Unlike the senator from Texas,
I’ve had a long experience with the Chinese,
going back more than 30 years.
And I know what can convince them to move toward a goal.”
Yes, I’m sure she does.
By the way, Feinstein, who is 85-years-old,
is running this November for her 5th term as senator.
But Senator Feinstein is not the only US official
who has close ties with the Chinese Communist Party.
She’s just one pawn in their larger game of “elite capture”—
to influence politicians all over the world.
For example:
The mayor of Bristol in the UK, Marvin Rees,
seen here during an all-expenses paid trip
to the “sister city” of Guangzhou.
And former San Francisco mayor Ed Lee,
seen here raising the Chinese flag above San Francisco City Hall.
And former Australian MP Sam Dastyari,
seen here speaking in opposition to Australia’s foreign policy
in the South China Sea.
And current New Zealand MP Jian Yang
denying that he himself is a spy,
even though he once taught spies in China.
Now that’s what I call “elite capture.”
So what do you think about
the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy of elite capture
and the history between Dianne Feinstein and Jiang Zemin?
Leave your comments below.
And before you go,
now is the time when we answer questions from fans of the show
who support China Uncensored on the crowdfunding website Patreon.
Evan Marsh asks:
“What are the most dangerous countries to be living in right now
near and around China?
By dangerous I mean danger from the communist party
of china’s influence or potential military threats.”
Good question, Evan.
In terms of military threats,
probably there’s no country that the Chinese military
would openly attack right now.
Except possibly Taiwan,
which it’s been threatening to attack for years.
But it would be pretty foolish for the Chinese regime
to start World War III over it.
But in terms of influence,
any country that’s part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
is potentially a highway to the danger zone.
For countries that are geographically near China,
there’s China’s communist neighbors:
Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea—
all of which arrest dissidents on a regular basis.
And then there are countries like Cambodia and Singapore,
which are free-ish countries,
but are under heavy influence from the Communist Party.
So none of those are great places to live if, say,
you practice Falun Gong.
But as a regular tourist,
as long as you stay out of politics and follow the rules,
you’ll probably be fine.
Thanks for your question, Evan.
And thank all of you for watching.
Be like Evan and support China Uncensored
with a dollar or more per episode
on the crowdfunding website Patreon.
Link is below.
You’ll get a chance to have me answer
your questions on the show.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.
You know, this episode makes it sound so easy
to get money from the Chinese Communist Party!
Maybe instead of asking you to support China Uncensored
by clicking on this orange button,
I could just make videos about on pandas
and wave the Chinese flag in the background.
Nah, I hate pandas.