China Queen Dianne Feinstein Used Her Senate Power to Push Most-Favored-Nation Status for the CCP’s Corrupt Dictatorship. Why? tabletmag.com/sections/news/…
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 LA Times, “Blum’s interest had grown to between $500,001 and $1M.”
In 1994, Blum’s company, Blum Capital, had entered a joint venture to found Newbridge Capital, specializing in emerging markets, including Asia. Blum said in 1997 that less than 2% of the approximately $1.5 billion that his firm managed was committed to China.
He held a $300 million stake in Northwest Airlines when it operated the only nonstop service from the United States to cities in China. In 2002, Newbridge was negotiating to acquire 20% of Shenzhen Development Bank.
After some rough seas, it paid $145 million for an 18% share two years later, marking the first time a Chinese bank came under control of a foreign entity.
Feinstein says that Blum’s business in China had no effect on her foreign policy or trade positions regarding the country.
Feinstein says that Blum’s business in China had no effect on her foreign policy or trade positions regarding the country.
“We have built a firewall,” she said of her relationship with her husband. “That firewall has stood us in good stead.”
Yet the record shows that the marriage between Blum’s business and Feinstein’s political career is a very close one.
Yet the record shows that the marriage between Blum’s business and Feinstein’s political career is a very close one.
Journalists from Feinstein’s home state’s two largest media markets, Los Angeles and San Francisco, covered that relationship thoroughly and often quite skeptically throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
The fact that relationships that should have come under serious scrutiny have rarely been portrayed in anything other than a favorable light—
— the New Yorker breathlessly reported in a 2015 profile that former President Jiang Zemin had spent Thanksgiving at the Blum-Feinstein home—reveals the extent to which the American elite has subscribed to the unproven theory that business with the CCP was good for America.
