FIRST ON FOX: A new book sounding the alarm about corruption in California spends a chapter focusing on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s history with a nonprofit organization that the authors say served as a major “gateway” for corrupt CCP-aligned corporations to flood into the state.
In their book, “Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All,” authors Jedd McFatter and Susan Crabtree write extensively about Newsom’s relationship with the Chinese community in the Bay Area and his ties to CCP businesses.
The book explains that Newsom came into office as San Francisco’s mayor in 2004 after receiving strong support from Chinese voters, enough so that he celebrated his victory in Chinatown and the authors write that from an early point in his tenure he was ready to “go full steam ahead with Chinatown’s interests.”
One of those interests, according to Chapter 3 of the book, was a nonprofit organization initiative started by Newsom called ChinaSF that the book argues served as a gateway for CCP officials and Chinese criminals to exploit California.
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The book describes a Newsom trip to China, where he was hosted in a Shanghai “clubhouse” by Vincent Lo, a Chinese businessman with deep ties to the CCP.
“It was during this meeting that Newsom and Lo hatched a long-term plan to turn San Francisco into the premiere gateway through which Chinese companies could invest and expand their businesses in the United States,” the book says. “Upon his return from China, starry-eyed Gavin told his staff that he was going to set aside a couple of million dollars to set up a public-private partnership called ChinaSF that would open the floodgates to Chinese money and business like never before. It turns out the young mayor wasn’t just blowing smoke: three years later, Newsom and Lo joined forces in Shanghai to co‑launch ChinaSF.”
The book says that ChinaSF impacted the Bay Area arguably “more than any other” program that Newsom created as mayor and that the initiative hauled in almost $5.5 billion of economic impact to San Francisco from 2008 to 2018 while recruiting 108 Chinese companies into the city.
The book alleges that during this time period, ChinaSF “helped several corrupt Chinese corporations come to America.”
One of the several companies discussed in the book was Suntech, a Chinese solar company developed by the CCP that was personally recruited by Newsom into the United States, and he publicly praised the company’s CEO, Dr. Zhengrong Shi, multiple times, and made him an advisory board member for ChinaSF.
In addition to green energy companies who streamed through ChinaSF, real estate companies were also involved, and the book alleges that Newsom received over $23,000 in anonymous contributions from Chinese real estate company Z&L, whose billionaire owner was criminally sentenced for bribing a San Francisco government official.
Chapter 3, titled “Feeding the Dragon,” goes into detail about a variety of potential red flags on Newsom’s ties with China, including ChinaSF being used as a “tool to build San Francisco into a global hub for biotechnology and pharmaceutical science.”
“Dozens of Chinese biotech companies were drawn to the Bay Area with huge tax breaks and other incentives, but it appears that there was very little vetting,” the book states. “One of ChinaSF’s most concerning recruits is the biotech company JOINN Laboratories, which has close ties to China’s military.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Newsom’s office for comment and received a response pointing to an article about conspiracy theories with the headline, “Conspiracy theorists really do see the world differently, new study shows.”
The book goes on to discuss ChinaSF’s involvement with biotechnology and pharmaceutical science companies that were “drawn to the Bay Area” with tax breaks and “little vetting” along with a liquor company called Kweichow Moutai, which has a history of “several major corruption scandals involving bribery by CCP officials.”
The book also alleges that as California’s lieutenant governor, Newsom trademarked wines he owns in China and poured them for CCP elites at a lavish Shanghai tasting.
The authors also drew attention to the controversial connection between ChinaSF and Huawei, a company that has been involved in a myriad of questionable practices that have drawn scrutiny from U.S. presidential administrations, resulting in restrictions.
“However, no one seemed to notice when an infamous Chinese company became their top financial sponsor in 2016,” the book says. “This might be because the U.S. government has long identified that company, Huawei Technologies, as one of China’s most dangerous tech companies. According to an internal report, ChinaSF hosted two events in 2016, headlined by Huawei, which led to Huawei establishing a new research and development office in San Francisco. The amount of money Huawei funneled to ChinaSF is unknown, but it’s worth noting that in 2016, Huawei generated more than $75 billion in revenue, so they had plenty of cash to flash around.”
ChinaSF once described itself as a nonprofit, including on its now defunct website, the book explains, but between 2009 and 2014 it was a limited liability corporation whose only member was the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
“In other words, for a period of time, ChinaSF was a private entity embedded in a local chamber of commerce,” the book says.
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The chapter closes with a summary of why ChinaSF’s influence in the state deserves more scrutiny.
“Close analysis of available data reveals that most descriptions of ChinaSF by government and media have been vacuous and misleading,”: the book says. “Essentially, ChinaSF is the branded name of a complex bureaucratic mirage used as cover to legitimize the massive transfer of Bay Area technology, property, and wealth to China while streamlining the establishment of Chinese business in the United States. It’s the secret elixir Newsom concocted to help transform San Francisco into the primary entry point and hub of China’s BRI in the United States.”
“On the surface, the flurry of MOUs, press conferences, ribbon cuttings, and so forth – propped up by reassuring proclamations from chambers of commerce and government officials like Newsom – cohere into what may look like an innovative job-generating public-private partnership. But the deeper you probe into who’s funding ChinaSF, who’s failing to vet all the Chinese companies coming in, and who’s making money off the deals – you discover there’s no reasonable public accountability structure in place, not enough records for the public to review, and no clear explanations for why the San Francisco mayor’s office has a right to engage in risky subnational business schemes in some cases with People’s Republic of China criminals and shady Chinese firms who have exploited and damaged the US economy and fleeced American citizens with their fraudulent schemes.”
“San Francisco is proud of its long-standing relationship with China and its sister city, Shanghai,” Newsom said in 2008. “ChinaSF builds on this history of shared cultural and economic ties, and strengthens future economic prosperity through enhanced relationships between San Franciscan and Chinese businesses.”
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