In November of last year, a glittering array of world statesmen gathered in Beijing for Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum. At the top of the list was former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He was worried. With China skeptic President Donald Trump imposing huge tariffs on Chinese goods, the most famous living diplomat was concerned about the future of the United States’ relationship with China’s Communist government. Trump’s actions, said Kissinger, had landed the two sides in “the foothills of a Cold War.”
That seemed unlikely, according to former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “China will be a big part of the global financial picture in decades to come,” said the former George W. Bush cabinet member. And then, Paulson made an off-handed remark that may turn out to be the most unintentionally prescient observation of the 21st century: “Unless something goes terribly wrong in China,” said Paulson, “no other nation will wish to decouple from its financial markets.”
Five months later, the wisdom of exporting millions of American manufacturing jobs and large parts of critical supply chains for everything from medication to ventilators to a hostile overseas power is looking ever more questionable, as a novel pathogen of Chinese origin has wreaked havoc on the American economy and locked the entire country indoors. In retrospect, Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao Zedong marked not only the opening of China, but also a nearly 50-year delusion about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its compatibility with America’s own economy and society.
For Kissinger, as for others, there was money at stake as well. “Kissinger was completely ‘played’ by the party,” says one experienced D.C. China hand. “His consulting enterprise, Kissinger Associates, built their ‘business’ around enabling the Chinese Communist Party and convincing Western business leaders that they needed to leave their ‘business judgment’ at the border and simply accept the party’s conditions as the price of entry into the China market.”
The links between leading American politicians and companies and the Chinese leadership are now likely to come under increased scrutiny.
First on that list of those deserving of close attention is the senior U.S. senator from California, Dianne Feinstein—a longtime member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—who briefly made headlines a few years ago when reports surfaced that she had been forced to fire a longtime aide after learning from the FBI that he had been recruited on behalf of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
No one represents the marriage of American policy toward China and doing business with the PRC better than Feinstein. Her promotion of trade with China to advance the interests of her constituents turned into apologetics on behalf of the Communist Party, as it aided her political ascent and augmented her husband’s portfolio. In October, USA Today listed Feinstein as the sixth-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $58.5 million—a sum that vastly understates her actual wealth. Richard Blum, her husband, is himself worth at least another $1 billion.
When Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992, Blum’s interests in China amounted to less than $500,000. She was named to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1995 and by 1997, according to the Los Angeles Times, “Blum’s interest had grown to between $500,001 and $1 million.”
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