Romney’s China Investments — The Story Behind the Story

Mitt Romney’s China investment controversy is far from over. A March 15 story in the New York Times concerning Romney’s family trust investments in a Chinese company that manufactures surveillance cameras used by the Communist Party-ruled police-state apparatus continues to cause waves and draw attention to U.S. policies vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that are immoral, as well as being harmful to our economy and harmful to the human rights of the Chinese people.

The Times piece reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Romney, stands to profit from its buyout of Uniview Technologies, the Chinese company that is one of the largest providers of surveillance technology to the Beijing regime. Team Obama viewed the article as a godsend, providing an opportunity to counterattack Romney’s criticism of President Obama’s “weakness” on China and his administration’s failure to recognize that “the Chinese government continues to deny its people basic political freedoms and human rights.” Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter accused Romney of “hypocrisy” and of being “less than forthcoming” with his financial statements, especially as they relate to China.

In a press statement, Cutter said:

Now we know why Mitt Romney has been less than forthcoming about the details of his finances. Romney and his trustee claimed that he divested completely from Chinese-based companies. But today we learned that he continues to have a partnership interest worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Bain Capital fund that owns a Chinese video surveillance company. This revelation not only highlights Romney’s utter hypocrisy on China, but it also raises more questions about what his investments are and why he won’t reveal all of them.

The Times article reveals both less in the way of damning facts than Obama supporters would like us to believe, and more than Romney supporters would like to admit. The Times piece notes, for instance, that Romney had placed his stocks in blind trusts and had no control over the Chinese investments. It reported: “Mr. Romney has had no role in Bain’s operations since 1999 and had no say over the investment in China.”

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Creative Commons

It noted further: “In a statement, R. Bradford Malt, who manages the Romneys’ trusts, noted that he had put trust assets into the fund before it bought Uniview. He said that the Romneys had no role in guiding their investments. He also said he had no control over the Asian fund’s choice of investments.”

Romney and his supporters have focused on the “blind trust” aspect of the Uniview Technologies stock, asserting that since he had no control over the purchase it represents no contradiction of his criticism of Obama’s China policy and no financial conflict of interest. They have also taken some solace from the report by the Washington Post that Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has a much larger stake than Romney in the Bain Capital Asia Fund that owns Uniview.

Read More at The New American By William F. Jasper, The New American