Europe Toughens Up on China; Jack Ma’s Family Grows Global Property Empire | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. European countries getting tougher in pushing back on China from trade safeguards to closer ties with Taiwan. We break down what's behind the growing tensions. The Chinese crypto queen behind a six billion dollar Ponzi scheme has been sentenced to 11 years in the UK. She's conned more than 100,000 investors. Once a symbol of China's tech power, Jack Ma disappeared from the public eye, but his family's fortune is far from idle. A 25 million dollar London mansion tied to his wife marks just one piece of a sprawling global collection spanning Europe, Asia and the U.S. National security concerns in Missouri where a trailer park with ties to Chinese intel services neighbors a Whiteman Air Force Base, home to America's B-2 Spirit bombers. The reporter who broke the story breaks it down. Europe is taking a tougher stance against the Chinese Communist Party. Countries are defending their industries from Beijing's unfair trade practices and deepening ties with Taiwan. On Monday, former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen visited Berlin, warning that Beijing's authoritarian toolkit poses a global threat. She compared China's aggression toward Taiwan and Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. That message came after Taiwan's vice president made a rare visit to Brussels last week. She called on European lawmakers to stand up to Beijing's growing pressure on the island. That message is resonating. France is now calling on Europe to defend its economic interests. It wants to reduce dependency on China for key materials like rare earths, which are critical for electric vehicles and defense technology. French officials say Europe should remain open to trade, but only on a level playing field. Meanwhile, the U.K. is scaling back scientific cooperation with China, limiting their partnerships to low-risk areas like health and agriculture. It's part of growing security concerns over China's progress in AI technology and how it could be used for military purposes. As European countries begin taking a tougher stance on China, they're also feeling the impact of its cheap exports. The European Central Bank says it's being driven by Beijing's weak domestic demand, rather than U.S. tariffs. These cheap imports have been hurting local producers and prompting calls for stronger trade protections. Altogether, it's a sign that Europe's patience with Beijing's unfair trade practices may be wearing thin. The mastermind of a vast Ponzi scheme in China now sentenced in the U.K. for money laundering. U.K. police say she bought cryptocurrency worth billions of dollars using stolen funds from more than 100,000 investors in China. The mastermind of a vast Ponzi scheme in China was jailed in Britain on Tuesday for over 11 years. And this footage reveals the moment Qian Chemin was arrested in northern England's York last year. She conned nearly 130,000 investors and laundered the proceeds of the fraud into cryptocurrency now worth billions of dollars. Will Lyon is from the Metropolitan Police. As part of this investigation, we seized over 61,000 bitcoin, now worth approximately five billion pounds, alongside other non-crypto assets valued at more than 20 million pounds. This currently represents the largest confirmed cryptocurrency seizure anywhere in the world. And the biggest money laundering investigation in U.K. investigative history by value. Prosecutors said Qian had tried to purchase a villa in Tuscany and high-end London properties to launder the proceeds of her fraud. But it was a 2018 attempt to buy a house that put her on the radar of British police. Many people lost their life savings and the emotional and financial impact on them was devastating. Today's outcome is a step towards justice for those victims. Qian Chemin pleaded guilty to two money laundering charges in September. Two of her co-conspirators have also been jailed. While the criminal proceedings have finished, there remains a looming legal battle over the fate of the seized bitcoin and how the victims of the fraud are repaid. British police revealed her six-year plan, according to her diary, establish an international bank by a Swedish castle and befriend a British duke and even become the queen of Liberland, a self-proclaimed microstate in Central Europe. Jack Ma, one of China's most powerful businessmen, has stayed out of the spotlight since his clash with Beijing cost him control of his business empire. But while he keeps a low public profile, Ma's family is quietly expanding its global property portfolio. In London, one of last year's top real estate deals, a historic Bulgaria mansion purchased by Ma's wife, was reportedly sold for more than $25 million. That places it among the top 0.4% of property transactions in the city in 2024. When the luxury mansion in London sold last autumn, the buyer's identity was a mystery. Now, the Financial Times reveals it with Cassie Zheng, the wife of Alibaba founder Jack Ma. The 7,900-square-foot townhouse used to house the Italian embassy and defense attache. Today, it's a six-bedroom home with its own private cinema. The townhouse was listed at a little over $28 million, but sold for $25.6 million. It's ranked as the 34th most expensive sale in London last year, and another addition to the Ma family's global property portfolio. The family of Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has developed a taste for ultra-prime real estate across Europe and Asia. The favorite properties that offer both privacy and long-term value, with buying activities surging through 2024 and 2025. Beyond a historic London mansion, Ma's wife purchased three adjoining shop houses in Singapore's Central District last year, valued at over $34 million. Earlier reports have also linked the family to a French chateau and vineyards, a 28,000-acre estate in upstate New York, and a lavish residence atop Hong Kong's Victoria Peak. National security alarm bells are going off in Missouri. A trailer park with ties to Chinese intel services shares a chain-link fence with Whiteman Air Force Base, home to America's B-2 Spirit bombers. Joining us to unpack it all is the author of the report that broke the story, Philip Lenczicki, senior investigative reporter with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Philip Lenczicki, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Hi, Stephanie. Thanks for having me. Now, you have a new piece out titled, U.S. Nuclear Bomber Fleet Shares Fence with Trailer Park Linked to Chinese Intel-Tied Frosters. First, what in the world? If I'm understanding this correctly, A, sounds like there's a lot of national security risks and concerns here, but you're telling me there's a fence that's all that's separating our stealth bomber fleet from, you know, a trailer park that has questionable ties to the Chinese regime? Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, that's correct. What we found is that there is a trailer park on the north end of Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Missouri. So, this is a very small town, more or less in the middle of nowhere. Population is like 2,900 people. And it's, you know, largely supported by the, you know, activities of the military base. And there is a trailer park there on the north end. It's about 25 acres. And it is literally separated by a short fence from the base. And directly to the runway where our nuclear fleet of B-2 bombers lands, you know, about one mile from that runway is, you know, the property. And even on Google reviews, there are individuals who have been, you know, just guests of the RV park who have filmed these, you know, stealth bombers coming in for landing. You can almost, like, feel like you reach out and touch them. That's how close they are. Insane. I remember talking to Ross Kennedy about the Fufeng Group, you know, next to the Grand Forks Air Force Base, about the kind of intel they could get. And he was describing it like holding a teacup under a waterfall. That's just how much information is there. Even if it's, say, encrypted and encoded, you can just still get so much information. Like, to your point, you can see basically the Air Force Base. I want to dig into this a bit, though, because you know that according to business records, this property comes with a slew of shell companies that then seem to tie to some questionable Chinese people. Talk to us about that. Digging into the RV park, what we found is that it's immediately controlled by a company called Property Solutions 3603LP. And that, in turn, is controlled by another company that is registered in Georgia. And that company has two individuals running it, and they are a Canadian couple who reside in the Vancouver area. And so looking into them, what we found is that they have a couple of different concerning ties to entities connected to the Chinese government. At one level, the purchase of the Missouri trailer park and some other properties that they made that are also near U.S. military interests was made while the female in the couple was a board member for a Vancouver investment firm which itself has many ties to the Chinese government and has had partnerships with state-owned enterprises. And its leadership has had individuals that are belonging to the Chinese Communist Party, high-level Chinese government officials, and whatnot. Meanwhile, at the same time, this couple, both of them, are not exactly flying under the radar as they are vocal members of the New Federal State of China. They host multiple different shows for the New Federal State of China. They are close with the New Federal State of China's founder, Miles Guo, insofar as they have been interviewed by him on a number of live streams. They have continued to defend him despite him being convicted of orchestrating an over $1 billion fraud scheme. And they've attended rallies for Miles Guo. And furthermore, we found that they're named in a Vancouver civil suit allegedly for having gone with other members of the New Federal State of China to protest at the house of a Canadian journalist. To your point, I think you also see that with some of those illegal Chinese marijuana grows that are also close to some weapons production. There's one in Oklahoma. But you've been covering this for years. Have you noticed, say, your headlines maybe turning into court cases, official investigations? Is there more awareness and action on cases like this? Not as much as we'd like. And so while there have certainly been hearings, there have been many strongly worded letters sent from members of Congress and whatnot. There have even been maybe some amendments included in certain National Defense Authorization Act. Still, it falls very short of what the actual issue is, because I would guess based on what we are able to find, that we're just scratching the surface and that there are likely hundreds more of these type of offenses all over the country. So I would imagine that this is going on, you know, totally in every state almost. Well, Philip Linzycki, as always, thank you so much for joining us. Jury selection is underway in Brooklyn for the trial of Linda Sun. Sun is a former aide to New She's been accused of bribery and secretly advancing the interests of the Chinese communist regime while working for the state from 2012 to 2023. Prosecutors say she took millions in kickbacks directing COVID-19 mass contracts worth more than $40 million to her husband and relatives. They also alleged Chinese officials helped her husband launch his export business in exchange for her influence. Corporate firms say the couple used the proceeds to buy luxury properties and vehicles, including a Long Island home, a Hawaii condo, and high-end cars. Sun is also accused of blocking invitations connected to Taiwan, forging a HOKO signature, and altering state recommendations to benefit family companies. Her attorneys are expected to argue she was making internal state policy decisions, not acting as a foreign agent. Coming up, Japan breaks decades of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, with its prime minister vowing military support if China attacks. From paid trips to China to lobbyists in Wall Street and Hollywood, Beijing is running sophisticated propaganda targeting the West. An expert breaks it down with one of our reporters after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Japan's newly elected prime minister, Senei Takeichi, has broken decades of the country's strategic ambiguity. She's the first Japanese leader to directly tie Taiwan's security to her nation's own defense. In other words, she openly declared that Japan would come to Taiwan's aid militarily if China attacks. Her comments sparked a diplomatic retaliation last week. China's envoy to Japan threatened to cut off the head of Japan's prime minister, and he now deleted posts on X. Here's more on what happened. Japan's prime minister, Senei Takeichi, has triggered a diplomatic spat with Beijing, after saying that a hypothetic Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo. Here's what we know. Takeichi was asked by an opposition lawmaker in parliament about, quote, survival-threatening situations, a legal term that allows Japan's premiers to deploy the country's self-defense forces. In response, she gave an example that an attempt to bring Taiwan completely under the control of Beijing using battleships and military force could constitute such a situation. She later added that an attack on U.S. warships sent to break any Chinese blockade on Taiwan could require Tokyo to intervene militarily to defend itself and its ally. The survival-threatening situation was defined broadly in a controversial 2015 law that expanded the scope of when the pacifist country's military could act. The law was met with large protests at the time. Takeichi also infuriated Beijing by publicizing her meeting with a Taiwanese representative at a regional summit in Seoul in early November. China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out using force to take control of the island. Taiwan strongly objects to China's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future. Takeichi's remarks triggered a threatening post from a Chinese diplomat in Japan, which wrote, quote, the dirty head that sticks itself in must be cut off. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Beijing launched a formal protest against what it said was blatant interference in its internal affairs. Taiwan called the Chinese diplomat's remarks toward Takeichi disrespectful and impolite. Responding to China's protest, Japan said it understands and respects Beijing's position on Taiwan and hoped Taiwan issues would be resolved peacefully through dialogue. Sophisticated propaganda coming from the Chinese Communist Party targeting the West. NTD's Jack Bradley was joined by Peter Schweitzer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, to discuss Beijing's strategies to soften our views of the CCP. Peter Schweitzer, thank you so much for joining us here today. Good to be with you. Now, the CCP has been offering all expense paid trips to China to influential people in the West, including politicians, academics and journalists like MSNBC's Chris Hayes, for instance. What's the end goal of this and what makes these people the primary targets? Well, China has a strategy, and they use the term, it's called elite capture. And the idea is that if they can influence the elite of a country, that could be in government, that could be in the media and in culture, and they can get them to have a softer view towards the CCP and China, they are all in favor of it. And so that is about building relationships that can be romantic relationships, that could be just social relationships, certainly financial relationships. So the goal is to get them to soften their views of what the CCP is doing. So this is not the same as sort of cultural exchange. This is elite capture, and it's designed to turn an elite in a country into a CCP supportive entity. What are some of the organizations that are running this influence campaign? And is this a component of the CCP's United Work Front Department? Yeah, the United Front is huge. And they use a lot of cultural associations and names. They can be Chinese Cultural Association in Los Angeles, in New York, or in Boston. They work with the United Front Department, which is part of the Chinese government and part of the CCP. So a lot of times it gets masked as something else. They don't come up and say, come to China, the United Front wants to pay your ticket. It's done in the name of cultural exchange. It's done in the name of face-to-face or people-to-people exchanges. But it's dominated and controlled by the CCP. Again, in the United States and in Europe and in much of the world, you have parts of the private sector, civic culture organizations that do this. That is not the same place in China. So people need to be weary of that. And I think a lot of American elites in particular have this kind of arrogant view that they're smart and sophisticated, and so they're not going to succumb to crude propaganda. It's not crude propaganda that they're looking for. They're very sophisticated in what they want. They call it big help with a little bad mouth. In other words, they know that some of these people that they capture, some of these elites that they capture are going to have to say bad things about China. That's okay if they're serving the larger purpose of advancing the CCP's interests. Right now, the bigger picture also, we're in the middle of a trade war with China. In Trump's words, we've seen some former US officials echoing Beijing's position on tariffs. How important is it for the CCP to have insiders peddling its narratives? Yeah, no, this is hugely important. You saw this in the first Trump term as well, when Trump was looking at putting tariffs on China and took a hard line on fentanyl and other issues in 2017. What did China do? Did they go to the White House and lobby? No, they went to Wall Street, they went to Los Angeles, to the entertainment community, and they went to CEOs, executives on Wall Street and said, hey, look, you want access to our market, you want these good deals, you are going to lobby on our behalf in Washington, DC. And you see a similar sort of thing taking place now. Look at the debate over TikTok, for example. China is not directly doing a lot of lobbying trying to save TikTok. What they're counting on is businesses and influencers who have a large presence on that platform to do the lobbying on their behalf, or they're looking for Wall Street investors who were early owners of portions of ByteDance TikTok. They're looking for them to do the lobbying in Washington, DC. Peter, recently you spoke about the Trump administration using the IRS to trace funding of Antifa. Talk to us a bit about how the administration's able to do this and what we can do about groups that are funneling money into Antifa. Yeah, it's a big problem. I mean, look, a protest is part of America's history, and we all recognize that protests break out, people expressing their views. The question is, when you have specifically highly organized protests that become violent intentionally, you're talking about something that's very, very different. That requires organization, it requires resources, it requires structure. And also, by the way, if it engages in violent activity, it's a criminal act. So that means you've got issues in terms of assault. People can be charged with assault. But you also have a number of other serious crimes that may be committed by those who are funding and organizing and supporting that criminal activity. The RICO statutes, which were the racketeering statutes that were instituted to really fight organized crime, they were designed to go after the people that are organizing the crime. Meaning, we don't want to just arrest the guy that beats up somebody on the street. If there's somebody that ordered that person to go beat somebody up on the street as part of a larger criminal conspiracy, that person should be charged too. That's what RICO's designed for. So when it comes to these protests, there's a lot of discussion about applying the RICO laws to these organized violent protests. And where does the IRS come into this? Well, a lot of these violent organizations are 501c3 IRS-recognized tax-exempt charities, which means they get tax-exempt donations. But it also means that they are under the scrutiny of the IRS if they are violating the law. So my suggestion was, and this seems to be what the Trump administration is doing, is using the IRS as a way to gather forensic information. Peter Schweizer, thank you very much for your insights here today. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at chinainfocusandtd.com. We'd love to hear from you. For on-the-clock original news coverage, visit us at ntd.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.