While the rest of us have been focusing on other things, our government has favored a company formed from state-owned companies in China, teamed with a US partner, to build a high-speed railroad from the Los Angeles area, in California, to Las Vegas, in the middle of the desert in Nevada. It has collapsed because the Chinese were not making progress with the build and the Federal officials must have thought it was not going to play well in an election year. Nobody, until now, has raised an eyebrow over this deal, especially since we are starting to see the relationship of Chinese businesses and people connected to the election of local governments in the US.
The story came out in the Wall Street Journal today, but several news outlets are carrying similar stories (Las Vegas and the LA Times have details). China was to finance this operation, starting with $100 million to get it going. This is a lot of money funneled into two states run by leaders in the Democratic Party. The way this worked in Virginia (also a Democrat) was that US companies, owned by a Chinese businessman, were funding both the governor and the Clinton Foundation. One of the Chinese who commented about this said it was important to influence local leaders because that was the path to influence at the top. Somebody in our government gave that Chinese businessman permanent residence status in the US so his donations would not come from foreign sources. Very clever, but highly illegal.
What we should be looking for is a similar arrangement with US businesses and Chinese leaders who are allowed to come to the US for permanent residence. They are using this as a path to influence our government leaders. The smoking gun is in Virginia, but a smoking cannon lies somewhere in the West.
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