Schweizer & McLeod: Hunter Biden Helped China Acquire ‘Strategically Sensitive Assets’

Hunter Biden’s Chinese investment firm assisted China’s acquisition of “strategically sensitive assets” in the United States, according to a New York Post op-ed by the Government Accountability Institute’s Peter Schweizer and Jacob McLeod.

Schweizer and McLeod provide further details on the investments former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, facilitated via his Chinese-backed investment firm.

In 2013, less than two weeks after accompanying his father on an official visit to Beijing–and despite his lack of pertinent expertise–Hunter Biden secured $1 billion (later raised to $1.5 billion) from the state-owned Bank of China for his newly formed investment firm, Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). This was in addition to the first-of-its-kind deal the Chinese government awarded Biden’s private equity firm Rosemont Seneca in the recently formed Shanghai Free-Trade Zone, a deal that allowed the firm to focus on international acquisitions.

“With the backing of the state-owned Bank of China, one of the country’s ‘big four’ financial institutions, BHR had access to the types of deals that most Western firms only dreamed of, including IPOs of state-owned companies,” Schweizer and McLeod write, noting that Biden’s firm “invested in strategically sensitive assets in both China and the United States.”

They write:

In December 2014, BHR became an “anchor investor” in the IPO of China General Nuclear Power Company (CGN), a state-owned nuclear company involved in the development of nuclear reactors. Not only is CGN a strategically important company in China, it was also facing legal scrutiny in the United States. In 2016, CGN was charged with espionage by the Justice Department for stealing US nuclear secrets.

As a “cross-border” investment fund, Bohai Harvest was interested in making deals outside of China. In 2015, BHR acquired Henniges Automotive, a Michigan-based producer of vibration-dampening equipment, alongside Chinese military contractor Aviation Industry Corp. of China (AVIC). Given the military applications of Henniges’ technology, the deal required federal approval. Like CGN, AVIC was suspected of stealing US technology for its purposes.

Not long after the Henniges deal closed, AVIC debuted its new J-20 fighter — incorporating designs allegedly stolen from the US’ F-35 program.

Schweizer and McLeod conclude by asking, “Did the Chinese give favorable treatment to Hunter Biden to curry favor with his vice-president father? The American public deserves to understand what exactly Hunter Biden was doing overseas and the extent of then-Vice President Biden’s involvement.”

The timing of Hunter Biden’s business deal is particularly problematic. His father was negotiating U.S. policy with China at a time when the regime’s behavior had become increasingly menacing to U.S. allies in the region. Vice President Biden’s kid-gloves treatment of China during that trip—a fact which was widely criticized by U.S. allies at the time—also raises questions in light of the lucrative business deals his son secured just two weeks later.

Biden’s BHR focused on strategic energy and defense projects, including U.S. companies specializing in technology used by our military, as Breitbart’s Haris Alic reported:

In 2015, BHR and the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) — an aerospace and defense conglomerate owned and operated by the Chinese government — made a $600 million bid to purchase Henniges, a Michigan-based automotive company. The sale required approval from the Obama-Biden administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), as AVIC was a subsidiary of the Chinese government and Henniges produced “dual-use” anti-vibration technology with U.S. “military applications.” CFIUS, which is made up of representatives from 16 different federal bodies including the Departments of State, Treasury, and Defense, is required to review any transaction with national security implications.

When the AVIC and BHR’s bid was first announced, alarm bells went off in certain sectors of the defense industry. In particular, many noted that AVIC was “reportedly involved in stealing sensitive data regarding the Joint Strike Fighter program,” which it later “reportedly incorporated … into China’s J-20 and J‑31 aircraft.”

Despite the national security concerns, CFIUS approved the deal with AVIC, purchasing 51 percent of the company while BHR took ownership of the other 49 percent. Upon purchase, an industry newsletter stated the deal was the “biggest Chinese investment into US automotive manufacturing assets to date.”

The acquisition of foreign technology is a key component of China’s aggressive “Made In China 2025” (MI2025) strategy to overtake the United States economically and militarily by dominating key technologies of the future (i.e. artificial intelligence, robotics, electric vehicles, 5G telecommunications, etc.). A 2017 report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce explained the role private equity firms like Hunter Biden’s play in this strategy. The Chinese government “is injecting state funds into private equity to fund foreign acquisitions” of companies with technology identified as a priority for MI2025, according to the report.

In his extensive report last February on China’s “whole-of-state” strategy for global dominance, Florida Senator Marco Rubio also noted the communist regime’s reliance on “intellectual property acquisitions” to achieve its ambitions.

“China is becoming a significant shareholder in U.S. industries, and is selectively targeting those with strategic implications,” Matt Stoller and Lucas Kunce wrote in The American Conservative last June. Their analysis exposes the extend to which China has co-opted Wall Street against the longterm interests of the American economy and national security. For example, they write:

Jennifer M. Harris, an expert in global markets with experience at the U.S. State Department and the U.S. National Intelligence Council, researched a recent explosion of Chinese strategic investment in American technology companies. She found that China has systematically targeted U.S. greenfield investments, “technology goods (especially semiconductors), R&D networks, and advanced manufacturing.”

Hunter Biden’s attorneys told ABC News last June that Biden still sits on BHR’s board and owns a minority stake in the fund.

At his campaign rally in Minneapolis yesterday, President Trump called out Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China while his father was negotiating U.S. policy with the communist regime.

“Biden allowed China to rip off America for eight years as vice president,” Trump told the crowd. “And Barack Obama let him just rob us blind, and we are not doing that anymore. Those days are over. The Bidens got rich, and that is substantiated, while America got robbed. That’s what happened. Sleepy Joe and his friends sold out America.”

The House Democrat impeachment inquiry has brought renewed interest in the sweetheart deals Hunter Biden’s private equity firm secured while his father was vice president, as detailed in Schweizer’s 2018 bestseller Secret Empires.

Democrats allege that President Trump attempted to coerce the Ukrainians into investigating corruption charges against former Vice President Biden during a July phone with his Ukrainian counterpart.

The allegation centers around Hunter Biden’s lucrative dealings with a Ukrainian oligarch-owned energy company at a time when his father was mediating U.S. policy towards Ukraine. The natural gas firm Burisma Holdings paid Hunter Biden over $50,000 per month for his work as a board member, despite his total lack of experience in Ukraine or the energy sector. Just a few months prior to landing this Ukrainian deal, Hunter Biden had been dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve for testing positive to cocaine use.

A Ukrainian corruption probe into Burisma Holdings was scuttled in 2016, when Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to the country if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor who launched the corruption investigation. Withholding the loans would have thrown the former Soviet republic into insolvency at a time when it was fending off attacks from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Both Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied the Democrats claim that Trump delayed military funding to Ukrainian in order to pressure Zelensky’s government to investigate the Bidens.

The Trump White House has refused to cooperate with the Democrat impeachment inquiry, declaring it a “partisan and unconstitutional” investigation.

https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/10/11/schweizer-mcleod-hunter-biden-helped-china-acquire-strategically-sensitive-assets/