Angela Chao’s Tragic Death: Why Do Caixin and Police Accounts Tell Different Stories?

Hello, friends. Welcome back to True Perspective. I'm Jundre. Today, let's talk about the mysterious death of Angela Chao, the youngest daughter of America's most prominent Chinese family and the Chinese shipping magnet. On February 12, 2024, the American shipping company Foremost Group issued a statement saying that its chairwoman and CEO, Angela Chao, had tragically died in a car accident at the age of 50. In just one short sentence, aside from revealing that Angela Chao died in a car accident, there were no other details provided. But what was surprising was that after this obituary was released, the American media were all completely silent and didn't report on it at all. Instead, it was the mainland Chinese media who were the first to provide more details about the car accident for Foremost Group. Taixin was the first to report a wealth of information about Angela Chao's death in a car accident. Even more shocking, three days later, on February 15, the American police actually refuted the rumors, saying that Angela Chao did not die in a car accident at all, but drowned in a pond on a private ranch in Texas. It was said that her Tesla reversed into the pond, causing her to drown. The cause of death is just too suspicious. There are so many mysteries surrounding Angela Chao's death, a little scrutiny is enough to send chills down your spine. First, who is Angela Chao? She was the youngest of the six Chao sisters and served as the chairwoman and CEO of Foremost Group. So what kind of family is the Chao family? The Chao family's roots are in business. Angela Chao's father founded Foremost Group, a company that started with maritime shipping and later became the largest Chinese-owned shipping company in the United States. Angela Chao inherited her father's legacy and became known as the Chinese female shipping magnate in America. Next, the Chao family's highlight is in politics. This is a family that can move freely among the highest echelons of political power in both of the world's largest economies, the United States and China. As an American family, the Chao family's influence in China is extraordinarily large. Angela Chao's father, James Chao, was born in China. When he was a student in Shanghai, he was schoolmates with James Amin. Later, due to the Chinese Civil War, he went to Taiwan and eventually moved to the United States. After the thaw in U.S.-China relations, James Chao returned to China in the 1980s and soon began a series of visits to China, establishing his image as a successful overseas Chinese who remained devoted to his homeland. During his visits to China, James Chao met with top leader Deng Xiaoping. After James Amin came to power, he was received by Deng at his residence at least six times. You can imagine that the Chao family was such a significant presence in China that even the highest leaders personally received them as patriotic overseas Chinese. In the United States, the Chao family's influence on the highest circles of power is mainly thanks to the eldest daughter, Elaine Chao. As early as the Reagan administration, Elaine Chao entered the U.S. federal government, serving as Deputy Administrator of the Federal Maritime Administration and was later nominated as Secretary of Labor in the Bush administration. During President Trump's administration, she once again served as Secretary of Transportation in the Cabinet. Elaine Chao, who comes from a family with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, had a relatively smooth political career in her early years. This was partly because, at that time, the U.S. government still didn't fully recognize the true nature of the CCP and U.S.-China relations were still in a honeymoon phase. As a result, American politicians with some CCP connections were nowhere near as sensitive an issue as they are today. Secondly, the Zhao family's past experiences in Taiwan also added a layer of ambiguity to Elaine Chao's identity. As we mentioned earlier, after Zhao's father, James S.C. Chao, left China, he went to Taiwan, and Elaine Chao was actually born in Taiwan. As a result, for quite some time, the media described Elaine Chao as being of Taiwanese descent, which meant that she was publicly seen as having both Chinese and Taiwanese identities. She even visited Taiwanese presidents like Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen. Well, for politicians, maximizing their identity to gain favor is just standard practice. So whether Elaine Chao represented the interests of the Chinese Communist Party was not easy to tell in the early years. Third, Elaine Chao's husband is Mitch McConnell, the long-serving senator from Kentucky. From 2015 to 2021, Mitch was the Senate Majority Leader and also the Republican Leader in the Senate. Now he is the Minority Leader. Whether it's Elaine Chao herself or her husband, both have enabled the Chao family to move flexibly within the highest circles of political power in the United States. This is the Chao family behind Angela Chao, a powerful family with extraordinary status on both sides of the Pacific and with strong connections to the highest centers of power in the world's two superpowers. For such a family, the sudden and untimely death of the youngest daughter is already enough to draw a lot of attention. The key point is this incident is also full of bizarre elements. First and foremost is the mysterious cause of Angela Chao's death. On the 12th, Foremost Group issued a statement saying that Angela Chao died in a car accident. With the death of such a public figure, you would expect a flood of reports and tributes. But the entire American media scene was strangely silent. In contrast, the media in mainland China responded very quickly, not only reporting Angela Chao's death but also promptly releasing details about the car accident. The mainland media outlet Caution was the first to reveal details of the car accident, saying that the accident happened on February 10th, which was two days before Foremost issued the obituary. Angela Chao was on her way to a business meeting being held in Texas. According to the local police report, you see they even cited the local police report. At the time of the incident, the vehicle Angela Chao was riding in was hit by a speeding truck that ran a red light. Angela Chao was pronounced dead at the scene. Afterwards, the truck driver was arrested and charged with drunk driving and manslaughter. This version sounds very detailed and convincing, but in fact, an American blogger said on his show that he has a source. He personally went to the Austin, Texas police department to inquire and checked the official website. From February until now, there hasn't been any fatal truck-related accident in the area, nor has any truck driver been charged with manslaughter for hitting and killing someone. This is fake news. Just as this fatal version of the story was going viral in mainland China, the American media could no longer stay silent. After all, Angela Chao is a celebrity. Not only is she the chairwoman of the largest Chinese-American shipping company in the U.S., she's also the sister-in-law of current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It wasn't really an option to keep ignoring it, so they started reporting on it. However, they only reported her death and didn't provide any additional information about the cause of death or other details. You know, in news reporting, just saying that a celebrity has died without mentioning anything else doesn't make sense from a journalistic perspective. If someone has died, reporters can investigate. They can get information from the local police, for example. It's also really hard for editors to write a news story that's just a single sentence. So this is pretty strange. After a while, as the rumors kept swirling, a new version of the cause of death emerged two days later. A well-known American investor, who was also a member of the advisory board at the Hudson Institute's China Center, Boss, said that Angela Chao died at a private ranch in Blanco County, Texas. Angela Chao got into her Tesla, backed the car into a pond, and that's how she passed away. Boss asked whether Angela Zhao decided to back her Tesla into the pond herself, or if her Tesla was hacked and controlled remotely. Does the Blanco County Sheriff's Office have enough technological capability to investigate this suspicious international death case? Then, on February 15th, the Blanco County Sheriff's Office in Texas issued a police statement, saying that on February 10th, the Sheriff's Office responded to a possible water rescue incident at a private ranch located within Blanco County. After arriving, the Blanco County police, together with the Blanco County EMS and fire department, found Angela Zhao's body in the pond on the ranch. On the 16th, CNBC interviewed Ben Oakley, the head of the Blanco County EMS, and obtained more details. Oakley said that just after midnight on Sunday, the 11th, emergency responders received a call requesting them to go to a private residence in Johnson City for a water rescue. Oakley said that the ambulance arrived at the scene at 12.12 a.m. and saw a car completely submerged in a pond. The depth of the pond was estimated to be between 12 and 15 feet, which is about 4 to 5 meters. There was only one person in the car. Rescue personnel pulled the woman out of the car and performed resuscitation on her for 43 minutes, but were unsuccessful. Oakley said there were no signs indicating how the car ended up in the pond. During the interview, he did not confirm that the deceased was Angela Zhao, nor did he disclose who made the emergency call or who owns the private ranch. However, in the previous statement from the local police, the term Angela Zhao's body was mentioned, which confirms that Angela Zhao did not die in a car accident, but rather in the pond. Isn't that strange? Just in this part alone, there are three suspicious points. First, why did Fufeng Group and her family state that Angela Zhao died in a car accident, when in fact she died in the pond? Second, why did Kaixin Media take the lead in fabricating that story about her being killed by a drunk truck driver? Third, the fact that Angela Zhao died in a pond is simply unbelievable. We're not talking about the Yangtze River, a big river, or the ocean. It's just a pond that's only four or five meters deep. A Tesla drove into the pond. If the car went into the pond because of a malfunction, Angela Zhao should have had every chance to open the door and escape while the car was sinking. And even if the Tesla loses power, there's still a safety door that can be opened manually, located at the front window. So if Angela Zhao had the will to survive, he was 50 years old and a top student from Harvard, so he should have been quite smart. It's hard to believe that after the car drove into the pond and was completely submerged, he couldn't find a way to escape before he drowned, unless it was suicide, or he simply had no way to save himself before the car was submerged. On this basis, let's look at the first two suspicious points again. Why did the Zhao family lie? He clearly died in a pond, yet they claimed he died in a car accident. If they didn't want to disclose the location and cause of Angela Zhao's death, they could have just issued a vague statement, like the one before, saying he unfortunately passed away due to certain reasons. There was no need to go out of their way to make up a lie and insist it was a car accident. Besides, wouldn't the powerful Zhao family know that Angela Zhao's death would be uncovered by the and independent journalists in the United States, where the news environment is much freer? After all, the truth always comes out in the end. If their lie gets exposed, wouldn't that make things even more awkward and suspicious? Isn't that just unnecessary and shooting themselves in the foot? So it's really hard to reasonably explain why the Zhao family would go out of their way to make a roundabout statement and fabricate a lie to announce the death, unless the cause of death being a car accident was intentional, done on purpose. If there was a purpose behind it, it's hard to believe that purpose would serve the interests of the United States. Because like we said earlier, there's no need for it. The truth will come out eventually, and it would just backfire. So this purpose is hard to explain within the American context? This also suggests why, for a period after Zhao Wenji's death, the American media collectively kept silent, probably at the request of the Zhao family, hoping to downplay the incident and keep things as low-key as possible. But ironically, it was precisely this unusual silence that drew people's attention. If it weren't for Bass's revelations, the public suspicions, and the police statement from Blanco County three days later, Zhao Wenji's death would have simply been seen as a car accident. So the car accident explanation offers no benefit in the U.S., only drawbacks. But it's a different story in China. The car accident explanation perfectly matches the details about her death that Kaixin added. There are two possibilities here. One is that the Zhao family themselves came up with the car accident story and then fed it to the Chinese media. But that doesn't really make sense. For the same reason as before, the Zhao family had no need to do that, because if it was exposed in the U.S., it would be a huge embarrassment. The other possibility is that the Chinese side first established the car accident narrative and had the Zhao family cooperate to keep the story consistent. Logically, this explanation makes more sense. But the underlying implications are just too dark. If the Zhao family was acting under someone's orders to use the car accident story, then the details about the car accident reported by Kaixin are really worth examining. Kaixin is run by Hu Shili. And whose person is Hu Shili? She's Wen Qishan's person. And Wen Qishan has close ties with Zhao Wenji's older sister, Elaine Chao. Back in 2019, during the enthronement ceremony of Japan's new emperor, Taiwan's Set News captured footage of Wang Qishan and Elaine Chao having a private conversation. The person with his back to the camera is Wang Qishan, and the one talking to him is Elaine Chao. They were standing behind all the other guests, and those seated in front of them were all heads of state-level figures. From their body language during the conversation, you can tell Elaine Chao was the audience, the listener, while Wang Qishan was the one actively speaking. During this exchange, Elaine Chao didn't keep her gaze fixed on Wang Qishan's face. She appeared quite relaxed, whereas Wang Qishan took the initiative to make eye contact with her from time to time. It was a bit like Wen Qishan deliberately used this opportunity to find Elaine Chao, sent away the people around them, and specifically wanted to tell her something. The backdrop for this conversation was the US-China trade war. As the Chinese Communist Party's trade war negotiator, was it possible that Wang Qishan wanted to use Elaine Chao to pass a message to the United States? Another background is that Elaine Chao had just been investigated by Congress regarding her ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Congress's investigation into her took place in mid-September 2019, while this meeting happened in late October. At such a sensitive time, for Elaine Chao to still dare to have a private conversation with Wang Qishan at an international event, under the scrutiny of the world's media, can only mean that in this environment, she either did not dare or was unable to refuse Wang Qishan. Now, Wang Qishan has already been sidelined by Xi Jinping, and Hu Shili has openly challenged Xi Jinping several times. If Angela Chao's death has even the slightest connection to the Chinese Communist Party, then isn't Hu Shili's obviously fabricated reporting in a way helping to whitewash the CCP and, indirectly, putting Xi Jinping on the hot seat? Of course, this is under the premise that Angela Chao's death is related to the CCP. So, is Angela Chao's death actually connected to the CCP or not? It's hard for me to make guesses without evidence, but the deep ties between the CCP and the Zhao family make it impossible to completely rule out this possibility. First of all, Foremost Group, which Angela Chao managed, is far more deeply tied to the CCP than what the outside world sees. In China's shipbuilding industry, Foremost is a household name. In 2006, at the Diayutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, a grand signing ceremony was held between China's state-owned China Shipbuilding and Foremost Group. That time, Foremost placed an order for four cape-sized bulk carriers from China Shipbuilding in one go. Including the orders from 2002, China Shipbuilding received a massive order for eight cape-sized bulk carriers from Foremost Group alone. Starting from that year, Foremost became the largest customer for China's ship exports to the United States. Even before this, Foremost had already contributed to the Chinese Communist Party's shipbuilding industry multiple times at critical moments. For example, in 1987, when the global shipping industry was going through tough times, Foremost placed orders for two 64,000-ton super-bulk carriers, the Xingmei and Yumei, with Shanghai's Jiangnan Shipyard. During the same period, a company connected to Zhang Zemin that sold radar equipment to the Chinese military paid dividends to the Zhao family. Another example, in 2002, when the global shipbuilding industry was once again in decline and China's shipbuilding sector was struggling, Foremost once again sent orders to the Chinese Communist Party, placing an order for 12 large bulk carriers with a shipyard in Shanghai, and later added several more 200,000-ton cargo ships. At that time, this kind of move was considered a bold gamble against the market trend. So did Foremost make its money from the United States? No, most of it actually came from China. For years, Foremost received extremely low-interest loans amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars from a Chinese state-owned bank, and the company's main business was also helping the Chinese Communist Party transport raw materials from around the world into China. In 2010, Foremost's ship, the Baomei, was launched. According to records from a Hong Kong company, the purchase of the Baomei was made by Foremost using a loan of up to $89,600,000 from the Export-Import Bank of China. At the time, with this loan, in addition to buying the ship, Foremost also bought another ship. According to data collected by Vessels Value, a company that tracks shipping data, from January 2018 to April 2019, Foremost's ships made a total of 152 voyages, of which 91 were either to or from China. This accounted for 72% of Foremost's total shipping tonnage during that period. So, for many years, Foremost's business model has been heavily dependent on the Chinese Communist Party, taking out ultra-low-interest loans from Chinese banks, placing orders with Chinese shipyards, and doing business in Chinese shipping. This is a classic Chinese business model that we've talked about many times on the show, using connections to secure loans, sending the money overseas for a spin, and then bringing it back to China for investment. The whole process fattens up the powerful figures along the entire chain of interests. This money, which is exported and then brought back for domestic sales, also turns into foreign investment that the elites use to divvy up the spoils. So, over the years, Foremost's growth has been inseparable from the protection and support of the Chinese Communist Party. And Angela Chao, who inherited her father's business, has continued this close cooperation. Angela Chao herself became an independent director at the Bank of China and a board member at China State Shipbuilding Corporation. In 2020, China State Shipbuilding Corporation was sanctioned by the U.S. government for allegedly building ships and weapons for the Chinese Navy. This January, just half a month before Angela Chao passed away, Foremost still placed a major order with a China State Shipbuilding subsidiary, CSSC Chengxi, for four bulk carriers, each weighing over 80,000 tons, with the deal totaling nearly 200 million U.S. dollars. According to data from Clarkson, out of the 31 large bulk carriers owned by Foremost, 21 of them are made in China. However, as China's economic and political environment has continued to deteriorate in recent years, it seems that Foremost has started looking for new partners. In 2020, Foremost placed its first bulk carrier order with Imabari Shipbuilding in Japan. Looking at the global shipping industry, Foremost is actually not a big player. In fact, it's relatively small. However, its business with China accounts for the majority of the company's operations. The marriage between the eldest daughter of the Zhao family, Elaine Chao, and Senator Mitch McConnell also carries strong undertones of a political alliance. In 1989, not long after Elaine Chao and Mitch started dating, Mitch began preparing for his re-election as Senator of Kentucky. At that time, Elaine Chao sent him a series of campaign donations totaling $10,000, coming from herself, her mother, and her sisters. Over the next 30 years, the Chao family became an important source of political funding for Mitch, and Mitch McConnell himself also became one of the most powerful Republican fundraisers in American politics. This kind of political relationship, in turn, made the Chao family even more significant in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party across the ocean. On February 9th of this year, just one day before Angela Chao drowned in a pond, her husband Breyer's investment firm in Beijing, IDG Capital, was placed on the Pentagon's blacklist of Chinese military industrial enterprises. This was the first private company to be sanctioned by the U.S. government. Putting all the pieces together, the circumstances surrounding Angela Chao's death are shrouded in mystery. What role did Kaixin, the first outlet to report the news of her death in a car accident, actually play in this incident? Why did Angela Chao's Tesla end up in the pond? Why was Angela Chao unable to escape and save herself? Why did the Zhao family specifically lie and claim that Angela Chao died in a car accident? Looking again, it's strange how every media outlet across China, from south to north, is uniformly reporting that Angela Chao died in a car accident. What kind of role did the Chinese Communist Party actually play in the death of the Zhao family's beloved youngest daughter? So why don't we let the dust settle a bit more and see what else comes to light? Subscribe to True Perspective and we'll keep following this story. If any of you have theories about what really happened, leave a comment and share them with me. All right, that's all for today. Thank you all for watching. Before you leave, don't forget to give me a like. I'm Zhenfei, who loves you all. See you next time.