is there a list of the companies or structure someone can provide?
So China has developed a 1% even a .1% class that is able to have its way with the political leadership as they intertwine. Are we offended because that was to be uniquely a Capitalistic characteristic?
It is true that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has finally matched the inequality lever of the USA, and some say exceeded it given it poor per capita income, the big difference is that the country's infrastructure as well as the surrounding area it invest in is expanding while America’s seems unable to meet that challenge. Maybe we should welcome their FEI (foreign economic investment) rather than fear it. It does jack up our GDP. The purchase of the Waldorf Astoria it an export.
Would not buy too much Anbang stock though might be a little shaky.
It is true that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has finally matched the inequality lever of the USA, and some say exceeded it given it poor per capita income, the big difference is that the country's infrastructure as well as the surrounding area it invest in is expanding while America’s seems unable to meet that challenge. Maybe we should welcome their FEI (foreign economic investment) rather than fear it. It does jack up our GDP. The purchase of the Waldorf Astoria it an export.
Would not buy too much Anbang stock though might be a little shaky.
Good research and journalistic effort.
Transition from communism to capitalism requires somehow placing national wealth into private hands. Compare China's process to Russia's. China's distribution to powerful government families was perhaps preferable, and no doubt more successful than the USSR oligarch evolution.
Transition from communism to capitalism requires somehow placing national wealth into private hands. Compare China's process to Russia's. China's distribution to powerful government families was perhaps preferable, and no doubt more successful than the USSR oligarch evolution.
@john
Here is a quote from Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, that does well to explain the difference of PRC to USSR:
"The Party's genius has been its leaders' ability in the last three decades to maintain the political institutions and authoritarian powers of old-style communism, while dumping the ideological straitjacket that inspired them. The Party's conscious retreat from the private lives of Chinese citizens over the same period had a similarly liberating effect on society. The dehumanization of everyday life that characterized traditional communist societies has largely disappeared in China, along with the food queues. In the process, the Party has pulled off a remarkable political feat, somehow managing to hitch the power and legitimacy of a communist state to the drive and productivity of an increasingly entrepreneurial economy.
The visible hand of the state and the invisible hand of the market, far from being contradictory, are made to complement and reinforce each other."
Here is a quote from Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, that does well to explain the difference of PRC to USSR:
"The Party's genius has been its leaders' ability in the last three decades to maintain the political institutions and authoritarian powers of old-style communism, while dumping the ideological straitjacket that inspired them. The Party's conscious retreat from the private lives of Chinese citizens over the same period had a similarly liberating effect on society. The dehumanization of everyday life that characterized traditional communist societies has largely disappeared in China, along with the food queues. In the process, the Party has pulled off a remarkable political feat, somehow managing to hitch the power and legitimacy of a communist state to the drive and productivity of an increasingly entrepreneurial economy.
The visible hand of the state and the invisible hand of the market, far from being contradictory, are made to complement and reinforce each other."
1
So? Shock and Horror. China has developed a 1% even a .1% class that is able to have its way with the political leadership as they intertwine. Are we offended because that was to be uniquely a Capitalistic characteristic? It is true that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has finally matched the inequality lever of the USA, and some say exceeded it given it poor per capita income, the big difference is that the country's infrastructure as well as the surrounding area it invest in is expanding while America’s seems unable to meet that challenge.
Maybe we should welcome their FEI (foreign economic investment) rather than fear it. It does jack up our GDP; its an export. Would not buy too much Anbang stock though might be a little shaky.
Maybe we should welcome their FEI (foreign economic investment) rather than fear it. It does jack up our GDP; its an export. Would not buy too much Anbang stock though might be a little shaky.
Empty offices, nominees concealing the beneficial owners, double books, fraudulent representations, banks and auditors on the take and happy to forge bank statements and audit reports: all of this is standard with Chinese companies. Meanwhile, these mysterious companies siphon cash out of our capital markets at a mind boggling rate. And I haven't even gotten to the hackers preying on US companies and the federal government, or the rampant theft of intellectual property and technology. Remind me again why exactly we are still doing business with China?
1
Congratulations, Michael! and to your co-author Jonathan Ansfield. I hope the story on the front page of the print edition with your joint byline was just the first in a series of others that unpack the details as you begin to do here. Michael, you've proved that reading bond prospectuses and other filings may be excruciating but produces wonderful information. There are many potential follow-up lines of inquiry on Anbang and its owners, as well as broad issue of whether the legal framework and due diligence methodology that foreign regulators apply to them are adequate. Good hunting! Stay out of China....
3
Not at all surprising, isn't this what the rich do no matter what country they are in?
2
Batten down the hatches New York Times. China's government hackers are coming after you again for picking on their elite. Great story, though.
So, what's different about the many corporations that have fake foreign "headquarters" that in many instances are represented only by a sign on a door?
2
Will poor corporate regulation and lax oversight be the downfall of western civilization?
1
The article addresses the complexity of the ownership structure, but then confuses its findings by stating that another company has a "stake that accounts for more than $15 billion in assets of . . . Anbang" and that a firm controls "$5.6 billion in assets." Presumably the author means that the companies own shares of Anbang currently valued at $X. Those shares are assets of the company in question; they are not assets of Anbang. The companies own a certain number of shares of Anbang, and indirectly, those companies' shareholders do as well (whether the entities and individuals you name actually control the voting of the various blocs of shares depends on other factors, of course). If you are trying to bring clarity to a murky picture, the article should be clarified.
Geek corruption in the upper levels of government, and water is wet.
Certainly you will find Panama Mosack Fonseca's funds invested through the multibillion scam that south american goverments have made. I did not know where all those billions stolen from Brazil and Venezuela where going, but now I see the light.
USA and Great Britain are the two biggest enablers of the plunder of Russian, Chinese and African national resources. Half of London and a large portion of Manhattan and Miami are owned by thieves.
1
Thank you for this article! This is the same old story about US regulators! Such poor oversight of transactions such as the sale of the Waldorf Astoria and other important US businesses! I can't think of a single New Yorker who felt this was on the up and up. First the fox gets into the hen house (leave the door open, honey!), and then regulators ask, was that a fox that just got in? Do we really want to allow so much foreign ownership everywhere just because some one else can make a super big buck? This is not the sale of a bagel shop. Sales to shadow businesses that are highly connected to foreign governments could affect our economy and certainly our culture. Can't say the US is unique, because it sounds like other nations also "just say yes" to these types of shadow transactions. Question is, how much havoc could foreign ownership cause to our economy, our politics (think Putin), or our everyday lives (think 2008)? Think first, regulators.
12
How does it hurt us if some Chinese shysters own the Waldorf Astoria? They paid big bucks to the former owners, and the hotel is still in NYC... they can't move it away. If they stop paying real estate tax on it (assuming our leaders haven't given them a tax abatement....) the city can seize the building and sell it off to someone else. If you are visiting NYC and don't want to stay at a Chinese-owned hotel, you can stay elsewhere; if enough people don't want to stay there, the current owners will have to sell it... so what?
1
So, Zhuo Ran took grandfather Deng Xiaoping's lessons to heart.
5
No other newspaper has the resources nor the tenacity to root out stories like this.
Thank you, New York Times !!!
Thank you, New York Times !!!
37
Whatever the method intrepid NY Times reporters used to reveal the "shy" owners of this dodgy company, you can be certain the Chinese government will block it for the next journalist who tries. There is no limit to the lengths the CCP will go to protect the connected and corrupt.
25
This story supports the notion that China, today - run by elites with connections to the Chinese Communist Party - constitutes a very real threat to the values of freedom of thought and expression, as it threatens economic freedom, which underlies all other freedoms. In this story, I recommend following the link provided to read the "interview" with Wu Xiaohui, visiting Harvard, to get a good sense of manipulations by these Chinese elite of money and power not only in China, still largely a Third World country, but in the US, also. "Chinese culture" - in which women are distinctly second-class citizens, in which Western consumption serves only the Chinese Communist Party-connected elite caste, in which Chinese concern only for themselves represents an almost biologically tribal dismissal of the rest of the world - can be read between the lines of Wu's language.
13
Shocked, shocked I am that a large company in a Communist dictatorship could engage in nefarious activities.
Wake up and smell the coffe: any successful Chinese company is putting 25-50% of its revenue into cadres' pockets.
Wake up and smell the coffe: any successful Chinese company is putting 25-50% of its revenue into cadres' pockets.
6
I think this article assumes the reader can read corruption into what you've uncovered thus far. I need historical context. Political context. Why is this wrong? Would the Average Chinese citizen be outraged? I'm a smart, fairly well-read person, but I don't know enough about China and overseas investments to make understand the import of this article. We (I) need the NYT to do more than investigate, we need it to help educate us regarding this complex world.
20
Okay - Lesson No. 1. Any former Communist who has not made his fortune by now, after the "fall" of Communism, is an incredible dummy who must have really believed in Marxist theory. Former Communists of whatever stripe were only interested in power and privilege, not in their people.
Lesson No. 2 - Surely the Average Chinese citizen would be outraged, if they had access to the truth about their rulers, and had no fear of them.
Lesson No. 2 - Surely the Average Chinese citizen would be outraged, if they had access to the truth about their rulers, and had no fear of them.
Hi. The context is in the main story, which is linked in this one. Thanks, Mike Forsythe
Americans are so stupid and lazy, letting America's "elite" do business with corrupt Chinese businessmen and officials. We are transferring our wealth to them, no questions asked.
Time to wake up.
Time to wake up.
18
It is like the westerners hiding their wealth in Panama and other small island. The Chines regime does the same, it hides wealth under assumed names of relatives in remote locations.
11
It seems we have fallen back into the old China that the Communist Party of China sought to destroy. To change China the culture must be changed, not the government.
7
Agreed. This has been a cultural battle that extends back before the Opium Wars, the "unequal treaties" and the pressure to accept Western values in trade and international relations. The conflict of 1842 has never really been resolved. Western regulators have to learn that they are dealing with something vastly different from corporate culture here in the US!
5
"The country’s online corporate records system allows those with patience to find the names behind the holding companies, even if — as with Anbang — the corporate shareholders frequently change names, addresses and owners."
Note that in the US, unlike big bad China, we have no such searchable database -- so dark money here is more easily hidden. Time to build one?
Note that in the US, unlike big bad China, we have no such searchable database -- so dark money here is more easily hidden. Time to build one?
60
It's called Edgar. You can find beneficial ownership filings for all public companies there, including the identity of shareholders owning 5% or more of the company's publicly traded securities.
If you thought American corporate ethics are troubling, what China is doing takes it to a whole new level. Unbridled greed, laundering, graft, ignorance of law, and conspicuous dealings are not seen as moral dilemmas. They're just the conduit for how things are going to work. And our country is increasingly playing dumb to all of it and lauding it as new and exciting foreign investment. The criminals have found their American safe haven and are transforming the way our business works to their liking.
40
Not just the USA. There has been a tremendous influx into Canada of wealth and people seeking a country where the rule of law, versus the power of murky politics, is in control.
So, we are aware that China is corrupt and greedy. The mantra of the late twentieth and the current twenty-first century. Jenny Mann responds.
8
Great story, NYT. Soon we'll find that Trump is indebted to Mr. Wu's empire. We already know Bank of China, plus Russian cronies of Putin own pieces of Trump's empire.
19
Trump indebted to China? Maybe. Everything possible today. But the real reason he won't release taxes: his entire "empire"'is afloat with Russian loans because no US bank would or could do it.
Great story NYT. And, as always, just follow the money. (See above.)
Great story NYT. And, as always, just follow the money. (See above.)
36
@David,
I'm assuming you have proof that Trump is being financed by Russian loans. If not then you are just...................................
I'm assuming you have proof that Trump is being financed by Russian loans. If not then you are just...................................
1
disturbing
15
What's the point in this article? White gloves, aka nominees/custodians, it is a practice accepted in all jurisdictions. That doesn't mean that Mr. Wu is not a smart businessman who make it to the top, savvy.
3
In Chinese social media, AnBang is jokingly referred as the Barbarian. Why? It smashed the door open with cash and buy whatever it can. It devoured banks and companies several times its size to become today's mammoth.
20