Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s financial disclosures reveal she was paid to speak at Caixin – a Beijing-based media outlet with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The financial relationship is revealed via her most recent disclosure as item 33 on a 68-item-long list titled “Filer’s Sources of Compensation Exceeding $5,000 in a Year.”
Caixin has been highlighted by The Washington Post for its ties to the Chinese Communist Party through its founder Hu Shuli, including personal friendships with former party leadership:
“Caixin, which Hu founded after leaving Caijing in 2013, has been able to navigate China’s media landscape better than most. Some attribute this to Hu’s savvy and personal connections — she comes from a line of Communist Party intellectuals and maintains a friendship with Wang Qishan, China’s vice president.”
“A 2009 New Yorker profile noted that Hu lived in an elite compound favored by government media workers. Yaxue Cao, a Washington-based activist, said Caixin couldn’t truly be considered independent because of Hu’s connections. “Instead of independence, it’s a privilege,” Cao said,” the Post continued.
As a result, Caixin has abstained from touching sensitive issues such as the the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
And, as with all media outlets in China, Hu’s former publication Caijing is described as “restricted by China’s Central Propaganda Department and required a government-affiliated sponsor.”
In addition to personal ties, Caixin also has financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2019 the media company attempted to raise up to $200 million, according to Reuters.
Revealed in the group’s financial were its primary backers: “tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd and investment firm China Media Capital (CMC).”
The State Department’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation has described Tencent as a “tool of the Chinese government,” noting the company has “no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party ‘no’ if officials decide to ask for their assistance.”
It provides “a foundation of technology-facilitated surveillance and social control” as part of the CCP’s broader crusade “to shape the world consistent with its authoritarian model,” the report added.
And CMC was started by a former Deputy Secretary General and Chief of Staff to the Chinese Communist Party’s Shanghai Municipal Government and counts its principal financial backing from state-owned China Development Bank.
The news comes as critics suggest Yellen’s appointment to the role of U.S. Treasury Secretary was premature and that she faced little scrutiny from lawmakers on Capitol Hill as a result of the Biden nomination.
Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if – given Yellen’s close financial ties to Citadel, one of the firms underwriting the short selling of GameStop – she should recuse herself from the situation.
Psaki responded with what has become a typical non-response from the Biden regime:
“We have the Treasury secretary — now confirmed. Obviously, we have a broad economic team. The SEC put out a statement yesterday that I referred to, but I don’t think I have anything more for you on it — other than to say, separate from the GameStop issue, the Secretary of Treasury is one of the world-renowned experts on markets, on the economy. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone she was paid to give her perspective and advice before she came into office.”
Yellen’s ties to Chinese Communist Party outlets is surely another cause for concern.
