State terrorism

China has a worrying habit of making business leaders disappear
by Sherisse Pham

The mystery of disappearing Chinese tycoons

A TOP EXECUTIVE SUDDENLY DROPPING OFF THE RADAR WOULD BE ALARMING FOR ANY COMPANY. BUT IN CHINA, IT'S BECOME A DISTURBINGLY FAMILIAR SITUATION.
The latest example is Wu Xiaohui, the chairman of a major insurance company that owns the Waldorf Astoria in New York and recently held talks with the Kushner family over a Manhattan office tower.
He is reported to have been detained by authorities on Friday as part of a government investigation. His company, Anbang Insurance Group, said in a short statement that Wu "cannot perform his duties due to personal reasons."
His abrupt absence follows a string of cases in recent years in which business leaders were unceremoniously yanked from their duties by authorities, leaving employees and shareholders in the dark.
In 2015, senior executives from dozens of Chinese companies disappeared. 

Some returned to their posts, others did not.
The driving forces appeared to be Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption as well as government investigations into China's stunning stock market crash in the summer of 2015.
Last year was relatively quiet, but a new push now seems to be unfolding ahead of an important meeting of China's political elite in the fall. 

Earlier this year, the head of the country's stock market watchdog reportedly vowed to capture more tycoons engaged in market manipulation.
Here are three of the most high-profile cases from the past 18 months:

Nabbed from the Four Seasons
Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua was seized from his apartment at the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong and taken to mainland China in late January, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Xiao controls the Tomorrow Group, a massive holding company with stakes in banks, insurers and property developers.

Xiao Jianhua

Days after he went missing, a front page ad published in a Hong Kong newspaper muddied the waters by appearing to deny he had been seized.
The statement, which had Xiao's name printed at the bottom, said that he was "recuperating overseas" and hoped to meet with media once he had recovered.
Nearly five months later, it's unclear what's happened to him.

China's Warren Buffett
Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group's investments include Club Med, Cirque de Soleil and Thomas Cook. 

Its chairman, Guo Guangchang, has been dubbed the Warren Buffett of China.
But Guo's fame and fortune did not save him from going missing for several days at the end of 2015. Fosun suspended trading of its shares after his sudden disappearance.

Guo Guangchang

When Guo finally resurfaced, the company said in a statement that he had been assisting officials with investigations.
His brief absence didn't derail Fosun's business. 

The company pulled in $11 billion in revenue last year.

Clothing tycoon
Zhou Chengjian, the billionaire founder of one of China's leading clothing companies, went missing in January last year.
After reports that Zhou had been detained by authorities, his company, Metersbonwe suspended trading of its shares.

Zhou Chengjian

The textile tycoon suddenly returned to work 10 days later.
The company gave no details about his disappearance.

Explaining Trump’s Subservience to China

Trump’s Conflicts of Interest in China
By Carolyn Kenney and John Norris

A man reads a newspaper in Beijing, November 10, 2016.

China spots an easy mark
Before becoming the 45th president, Donald Trump’s efforts to develop businesses in China were most notable for their failures. 

A 2008 deal with the Chinese Evergrande Group to develop an office complex never came to fruition, and a 2012 deal with the electric utility State Grid Corporation of China to develop property in Beijing fell apart after State Grid was found to have been illegally using public land for the project. 

In October 2016, Chinese news media quoted Trump Hotel’s—formerly Trump Hotel Collection’s—CEO Eric Danziger telling attendees of a hospitality conference in Hong Kong that the group was still planning to open Trump hotels in 20 to 30 Chinese cities, as well as Scion—the brand Trump’s sons are planning to expand—hotels in other cities. 

These comments showed a remarkable level of ambition given Trump’s stalled efforts in China up to that time.
Indeed, Trump had tried for more than a decade to register trademarks in China to provide “construction-information,” essentially real estate agent, services in that country, only to be met with a series of unsuccessful rulings and appeals. 

Since 2005, Trump has applied for at least 130 trademarks in China, all of which—until recently—were met with zero success.
What is very important to note about China is how heavily involved the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) is in all decision-making processes, not only across all government agencies but also in the judiciary, which is not independent, as well as in state-owned enterprises, which include state-run banks. 

Regarding state-owned enterprises, Xi Jinping recently reminded these companies that the CPC has ultimate say over their decisions, stating, “Party leadership and building the role of the party are the root and soul for state-owned enterprises. The party’s leadership in state-owned enterprises is a major political principle, and that principle must be insisted on.” 

As such, any decisions made at state-owned enterprises are invariably made by the Chinese government, including decisions regarding the hiring, firing, and promotion of individuals who work in these enterprises.

Here is the danger of Trump’s conflicts of interest for the United States. 

Prior to taking office, on December 2, 2016, Trump spoke with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on the phone in an extraordinary breach of decades of U.S. foreign policy and protocol regarding China and Taiwan. 

Shortly after the call, it emerged that the Trump Organization was reportedly exploring the expansion of its business into Taiwan, reports that the organization has denied. 

In a televised interview, the mayor of Taoyuan, Taiwan, said that he had met with a representative of the Trump Organization in September to discuss possible real estate projects, and at least one Trump employee was found to have posted that she was in Taiwan on a business trip at the time.
As summarized in an Atlantic article, “The president of the United States breached decades of international protocol created to preserve a precarious balance of power. That decision raised not only the possibility that Trump was blundering into a potential international incident but also that he may have done so in part out of consideration for his business prospects.”

And then, lo and behold, China’s approval of one of Trump’s trademark applications became official—coincidentally only a few days after Trump reversed his previous position and endorsed the “one China” policy. 

This policy effectively recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of the mainland territory while allowing the U.S. government to have unofficial relations with Taiwan, governed by the Republic of China. 

In March 2017, China granted preliminary approval for 38 additional Trump trademarks, applications for which had been submitted in April 2016. 

While there are conflicting views about whether the process and timing of Trump’s recent trademark approvals are suspect, the reality of the matter is that in China, every administrative or judicial decision is a political one based on the government’s preferences and priorities; courts in China are not independent, but rather they report directly to the CPC. 

Also of note here is the fact that foreign companies have historically struggled to get equal treatment under Chinese law, so decisions in favor of a foreign company are striking. 

It is hard to avoid the appearance that China was giving Trump the trademarks in exchange for a direct shift in policy. 

As another Atlantic article points out: “Each subsequent ruling in his favor will serve to remind Trump of the personal profits he could reap by improving his own personal relations with China, even if doing so leaves the American people worse off.”
And the web of conflicts and Chinese influence on Donald Trump and the Trump family extends well beyond the longstanding trademarks issue.
In February, in its first major real estate transaction after Trump’s inauguration, the Trump Organization sold a $15.8 million penthouse apartment in Trump Tower to Chinese-American business executive Xiao Yan Chen, who also goes by the name Angela Chen and has been directly linked to a front group for Chinese military intelligence through the misleadingly innocuous-sounding China Arts Foundation. 

A 2011 congressional report was quite blunt in labeling the China Arts Foundation as “a front organization for the International Liaison Department of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Political Department.” 

Chen also founded and is currently the managing director of a business consulting firm called Global Alliance Associates, which “facilitates access and establishes critical strategic relationships with the most influential public and private decision makers” in China by mobilizing its “extensive network of relationships with the highest levels of government officials—at national, regional and local levels—to facilitate immediate, efficient and skillful access into the Chinese market place.” 

Neither Chen nor the China Arts Foundation replied to requests for comment from reporters.
While Trump has removed himself from the board of directors of the corporation that runs Trump Tower, he still owns the company and thus continues to profit from it. 

This puts Trump in a position to profit from an individual—Xiao Yan Chen—who has ties to the highest echelons of the Chinese government and military and who would benefit enormously from access to the U.S. government.
Trump has been dependent on Chinese money for quite a while. 

According to an investigation by The New York Times, Trump holds 30 percent ownership of an office building in Manhattan at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, for which four lenders, including the state-owned Bank of China, provided a $950 million loan in 2012. 

Commenting on the loan, Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s chief White House ethics lawyer, stated, “Any payments from foreign governments or payments from banks controlled by foreign governments would fall under the emoluments clause. The loans from the Bank of China could be an issue.” 

The Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution makes it illegal for a U.S. president to directly benefit from payments from foreign powers.
The reach of Chinese influence and money has also been linked to the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. 

In 2016, Kushner Companies, which until recently was headed by Jared Kushner, was desperate to find outside money to put into a property at 666 Fifth Avenue for which his company had paid $1.8 billion in 2007—an outlandish overpayment in light of the subsequent 2008 market crash. 

The Fifth Avenue property was badly overleveraged and risked collapsing Kushner’s entire company. Once again, Chinese money seemed eager to come to the rescue. 

Kushner began talks with the massive Chinese financial firm Anbang Insurance Group to undertake a joint venture to redevelop the Fifth Avenue property.
Anbang is one of the most aggressive Chinese buyers of U.S. real estate and has very close ties to the Chinese government. 

Its shadowy structure has caused suspicion about its real ownership and has led some U.S. firms to not work with the company because it doesn’t meet their client information guidelines. 

Anbang is headed by Wu Xiaohui, who is married to the granddaughter of former Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping.
The talks to secure the potential $4 billion deal between the Kushner and Anbang companies, however, reportedly ended a few days after Democratic lawmakers wrote letters to the Office of the White House Counsel and the treasury secretary expressing ethical and legal concerns over the deal. A Kushner spokesman declined to comment further to reporters about the deal ending.
And while Kushner has now stepped down from the Kushner family business, he will still be a beneficiary of much of the business through his trusts. 

The reverse is true as well: It appears that the family is trying to cash in on Jared Kushner’s new role as a White House senior adviser. 

According to The Washington Post, representatives from Kushner Companies, including Jared’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer, recently gave a presentation to Chinese citizens in Beijing encouraging them to each invest $500,000 in the family’s Trump-branded New Jersey luxury apartment complex in exchange for an EB-5 immigrant investor visa. 

Known in China as the “golden visa,” the immigrant investor visa allows wealthy foreigners who provide large amounts of funding to U.S. projects that create jobs to apply for a visa and immigrate to the United States. 

As reported by Bloomberg, prior to taking on his role in the White House, Jared Kushner had raised $50 million from Chinese immigrant investor visa applicants for the New Jersey project. 

Ethics experts, including Painter, criticized the event, with Painter noting in a Washington Post article that the company “clearly impl[ies] that the Kushners are going to make sure you get your visa. … They’re [Chinese applicants] not going to take a chance. Of course they’re going to want to invest.” The Kushner company spokesperson declined to comment on the Post’s story.
The Chinese Communist Party’s links to Trump go even further. 

In 2008, the state-controlled Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)—which reports to the CPC and is currently the world’s largest lender—signed a lease for the 20th floor in Trump Tower in New York City. 

The lease is slated to end in October 2019, meaning that a new lease will have to be negotiated while Trump is in office if the ICBC decides to renew. 

According to Bloomberg, the latest available data from Wells Fargo filings show that as of 2012, the ICBC was Trump Tower’s biggest office tenant, taking up 11 percent of its office space, and was paying more than any other major tenant in Trump Tower at $95.48 per square foot. 

According to data from CoStar Group, the deal has been worth more than $1.5 million annually to the Trump Organization. 

Many see the relationship between Trump and the ICBC as already violating the Emoluments Clause of the constitution, while others view it as a potential area for future violations of the clause, notably if Trump receives payments from the ICBC that are above market value.
In addition, the China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation, a state-controlled company in China also known as Sinosure, is investing $425 million in one of Trump’s resorts in Indonesia, specifically for a theme park to be built by another Chinese state-owned company.
And, not surprisingly, Ivanka Trump also seems to be suddenly benefitting from all this newfound Chinese largesse. 

On the very same day that Trump and Ivanka met with Xi Jinping, China preliminarily approved three new trademarks for Ivanka’s brand to cover jewelry, bags, and a spa service.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Ivanka Trump Marks LLC has been granted preliminary approval of at least five trademarks in China, bringing the total number of registered trademarks for the company to 16, with 30 pending applications. 

While Ivanka no longer manages her brand, she still owns it. 

In an attempt to address potential conflict of interest issues, she put her brand’s assets in a family-run trust, which is worth more than $50 million, and pledged to recuse herself from issues that might present conflicts.
Conflict of interest laws bar federal officials, such as Ivanka and her husband, from participating in government affairs that could potentially impact their own financial interests or those of their spouses—a standard that they seem to not be meeting by any fair reading. 

Ivanka’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, has stated that Ivanka and her husband would avoid specific areas that could impact her business and be seen as conflicts of interest but that they are not under a legal obligation to step back from large areas of policy, such as trade with China. 

Gorelick also noted that Ivanka would recuse herself from conversations pertaining to duties levied on clothing imported from China but not on broad foreign policy.
In an example that highlights the potential dangers of these conflicts, The Guardian recently reported that a labour rights activist who was working undercover to investigate abuses at a Chinese factory producing Ivanka Trump-brand shoes is being held by police and two other labor activists were missing, “raising concerns the company’s ties to the US president’s family may have led to harsher treatment.” 

The executive director of the group investigating the factory, Li Qiang, said that the missing activists were preparing to publicly allege labor violations at the factory, “including paying below China’s legal minimum wage, managers verbally abusing workings and ‘violations of women’s rights.’” 

Li noted that he had contacted the Ivanka Trump brand about the violations on April 27 to request that the brand call on suppliers to comply with Chinese law but did not see evidence that any changes were made. 

The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment to The Guardian, and calls to the factory owner went unanswered.

Follow the paper trail
According to Trump’s July 2015 financial disclosure—which was not verified by regulators and therefore may not include all of his foreign deals or assets—Trump owned, had ownership interest in, or was a managing member of several companies related to potential business in China, including the following:

• THC China Development LLC, president. Value: $100,001 to $250,000. Income amount: “None (or less than $201)”
• THC China Development Management Corp., chairman, director, president
• THC China Technical Services LLC, member, president
• THC China Technical Services Manager Corp., chairman, director, president
• THC Services Shenzen LLC, member, president
• THC Services Shenzen Member Corp., chairman, director, president
• THC Shenzen Hotel Manager LLC, member, president
• THC Shenzen Hotel Manager Member Corp., chairman, director, president

According to Trump’s May 2016 financial disclosure—which also was not verified by regulators and therefore may not include all of his foreign deals or assets—Trump owned, had ownership interest in, or was a managing member of several companies related to potential business in China, including the following:

• China Trademark LLC, member, president
• THC China Development LLC, president. Value: $1,001 to $15,000. Income amount: “None (or less than $201)”
• THC China Development Management Corp., chairman, director, president
• THC China Technical Services LLC, member, president
• THC China Technical Services Manager Corp., chairman, director, president
• THC Services Shenzen LLC, member, president
• THC Services Shenzen Member Corp., chairman, director, president
• THC Shenzen Hotel Manager LLC, member, president
• THC Shenzen Hotel Manager Member Corp., chairman, director, president

All of these obvious conflicts of interest should give Americans pause. 

If Donald Trump negotiates a trade deal with China, will he accept terms that will cost American workers jobs but help his hotel brand? 

If China makes aggressive military moves in Asia, will Trump fail to effectively respond because he is worried about jeopardizing his daughter’s trademarks in Beijing or losing Chinese financing for his properties? 

Americans can have no confidence that Trump’s decisions aren’t being driven by his business interests in China when he won’t release his tax returns. 

Already Trump has shown a pattern of backing down in the face of Chinese demands, as shown by his abrupt shift on the “one China” policy at  Xi Jinping’s request. 

When trying to explain Trump’s new subservience to China, one need look no further than his business interests.

After Failed Talks With Kushner, More Trouble for a Chinese Tycoon

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

Wu Xiaohui, the president and chief executive of the Anbang Insurance Group. Caixin Weekly magazine questioned whether Anbang was as financially robust as the company claimed. 

BEIJING — Wu Xiaohui, the Chinese tycoon who was in failed talks with President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to buy into a skyscraper project in Manhattan, is fighting allegations of financial chicanery and has threatened to sue a Chinese magazine that examined his company’s labyrinthine funding.
The Anbang Insurance Group, which Mr. Wu controls as president and chief executive, said on Sunday that it would take legal action against Caixin Media and its editor in chief, Hu Shuli, after Caixin Weekly magazine questioned whether Anbang was as financially robust as the company claimed.
“Anbang’s shareholder structure is like a maze,” Caixin said in an article published online on Saturday and in print on Monday. 

It said that Anbang’s meteoric growth and acquisitions raised suspicions of financial sleight of hand, including capital injections coming from companies linked to Mr. Wu.
“The left hand has been helping the right hand to inflate capital,” the article said.
Anbang hit back with its own incendiary accusations. 

Caixin is a widely respected economics weekly, and its findings echoed an extensive report on Anbang by The New York Times last year. 

But Anbang suggested on Sunday that Caixin had published its report after failing to squeeze advertising orders and other contributions from Anbang.

According to Anbang, Caixin falsely claimed that Mr. Wu had married three times and “made a series of smears and slanders against our company’s legitimate business activities.” 

The marriage allegation appeared to refer to a report in Caixin in 2015.
Caixin responded to Anbang’s threat to sue with its own threat of litigation. 

On its website on Monday, Caixin said the suggestion that it took on Anbang out of vengefulness was “an attempt at framing with no basis in facts.”
“We strongly condemn the slander in the Anbang statement and reserve the right to take legal recourse,” Caixin said. 

A director of communications at Caixin, Ma Ling, declined to answer questions and referred to the online statement.
Caixin’s latest report on Anbang has been part of a burst of unwelcome attention for the company and Mr. Wu, which has thrown into doubt his business acumen and his reputation for political invulnerability.
“The level of detail that is provided in the article is, I think, relatively unique for any type of story of a Chinese company in Chinese media,” Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the Peking University HSBC Business School in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, said by telephone.
A lawsuit would pit a company that has recently appeared politically vulnerable against a magazine that has proved skilled at navigating censorship to report on corruption and financial shenanigans in China.
The controversy over Anbang has come while the Chinese Communist Party government under Xi Jinping is seeking stability ahead of a leadership turnover later this year. 

But Xi also vowed in late April to rid China’s banks, insurers and other financial companies of excessive risk. 

Last month, Xiang Junbo, the chief regulator of Chinese insurers, including Anbang, was put under investigation by party anticorruption investigators.
The questions raised by the article, and by the possibility of a lawsuit, may test whether the desire for stability will outweigh the government’s vows to take on nettlesome financial issues.
“Anbang is definitely a little bit more extreme and more aggressive than other Chinese insurance companies,” Mr. Balding said. 

“But at the same time, if you look at the finances of the insurance industry at large, and at individual insurance companies, their revenue and building and things like that were exploding by just astounding rates in the past few years.”

The headquarters of Anbang in Beijing. Its meteoric growth and acquisitions have raised suspicions of financial sleight of hand, Caixin Weekly magazine said.

Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman who fled abroad, has added to the recent jitters in Beijing by publicizing allegations of corruption reaching into the party elite. 

Mr. Guo has also clashed with Caixin.
Mr. Wu’s family and personal ties are at the heart of the growing questions about Anbang, which he co-founded in 2004.
He has been a member by marriage of China’s political and business aristocracy: He married a granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist patriarch who oversaw China’s market reforms in the 1980s. 

Mr. Wu also came close to sealing a partnership with American political royalty through Mr. Kushner, the New York developer who is a son-in-law and adviser of Mr. Trump.
Anbang was in talks with Mr. Kushner’s family company to pay $400 million for a stake in a flagship skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. 

Anbang bought the Waldorf Astoria hotel, a popular venue on the New York social calendar, in 2014 as part of a spree of acquisitions.
But the deal with Mr. Kushner’s company foundered in March, in the wake of growing controversy about a presidential in-law doing business with a Chinese conglomerate with many ties to Beijing’s political elite. 

Mr. Kushner has also become an influential White House adviser to Mr. Trump, including on China policy.
Anbang’s international luster had already dulled after it withdrew an application last year to buy an Iowa insurer, Fidelity & Guaranty Life, and also shelved a $14 billion bid to buy Starwood Hotels and Resorts. 

Before those deals foundered, American investors and regulators raised doubts about Anbang’s opaque ownership and its financial strength.
Now Caixin has laid out similar doubts for its readers. 

The Chinese news media had already raised questions about Anbang’s spending spree, but Caixin stepped into more sensitive territory by examining the group’s ownership and accounts in painstaking detail.
In 18 months from October 2014, Caixin estimated, Anbang had spent $16 billion on overseas acquisitions. 

But Caixin also said Anbang’s successive injections of capital, which have helped finance these deals, appeared to often involve companies linked to Mr. Wu’s relatives and associates, raising the possibility that they were not real injections by outside investors.
Anbang appeared to have “used circular injections of funding to magnify its capital,” the report said.
The Caixin report said those doubts were reinforced by Anbang’s complicated ownership. 

Many of those companies registered under obscure addresses, with little capital registered in their names, and often they were formed in clusters shortly before they bought into Anbang — findings that echo the Times report. 

The names, addresses and other details of dozens of people registered as holding shares suggested that they were Mr. Wu’s relatives and associates.
Until recent days, Anbang was mostly silent about the reports on Mr. Wu and the group’s finances, including internet-born rumors that he had been held as part of a criminal investigation. 

No Chinese officials have said anything to suggest that Mr. Wu was detained or under investigation.
But since late last week the company has fought back. 

Anbang issued a statement on Friday that it had sufficient cash flows; it told a Chinese newspaper that rumors that Mr. Wu was in detention were false; and Mr. Wu gave an interview to another Chinese newspaper, The Beijing News, that also seemed intended to squash the rumors.
Mr. Wu said in the interview that Anbang was especially enthusiastic about Xi’s plan to expand Chinese investment and construction abroad in a much-promoted plan called “One Belt, One Road.” Now investors and political analysts will watch to see whether Xi’s government takes sides in the dispute between Anbang and Caixin.
“Hu Shuli and Caixin have done an amazing job carving out a space for honest and incisive reporting in China’s heavily censored media,” Victor Shih, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies finance and politics in China, said by email. 

“Caixin will need all of its savvy to navigate the Anbang lawsuit though.”

The Chinese Connection

What do Kushner talks with China's Anbang mean for Trump?
BBC News

Kushner's company is under the spotlight over a possible property deal with a Chinese firm

A company part-owned by Donald Trump's son-in-law and now senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, is negotiating a deal with a Chinese company to redevelop 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The 41-floor ageing property, which occupies a full block that fronts Fifth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street, was purchased by Kushner Companies in 2006 for $1.8bn (£1.5bn). 

At the time, it was the highest price paid for a single building in Manhattan.
But does Chinese interest in the building, just a few blocks south of Trump Tower, raise questions over a conflict of interest with someone so personally and professionally close to the US president? 

And would a possible sale to China's Anbang Insurance Group pose security risks?

Deal or no deal?
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Anbang was planning a $4bn (£3.3bn) investment deal with the owners of 666 Fifth Avenue. 

The agreement, the news agency reported, would make Kushner Companies, owned by Jared Kushner and his father Charles, more than $400m (£327m).
The report says that some real estate experts consider the terms of such a transaction unusually favourable for the US company.

Kushner Companies is in "discussions" involving 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City

On Tuesday, however, Anbang said that reports circulating of its investment in the Fifth Avenue property were "not correct".
"There is no investment from Anbang for this deal," the company wrote in a statement.
Kushner Companies later confirmed that it is in "active discussions" over the building in Manhattan, but did not name Anbang specifically.
"Nothing has been finalised," company spokesman James Yolles told Reuters news agency.

What are the conflicts of interest?
After Kushner was given a senior role inside the White House, his lawyer told the New York Times that he "would recuse from particular matters that would have a direct and predictable effect on his remaining financial interests".
As an owner of Kushner Companies, and with close ties to Mr Trump, investment deals under negotiation between his company and firms such as Anbang do raise questions.
Responding to these concerns, company spokesman Mr Yolles said that Mr Kushner sold his ownership stake in 666 Fifth Avenue to family members, meaning that any transaction would pose no conflict of interest with his role at the White House.
"Kushner Companies has taken significant steps to avoid potential conflicts and will continue to do so," Mr Yolles said in a statement.

What do we know about the Kushners?
Jared Kushner, 36, is married to Mr Trump's daughter, Ivanka. 

In 2006, at just 25, the softly-spoken millionaire bought the once-venerable New York Observer newspaper.
Although he shares with Trump a complete lack of political experience, last year he exerted a powerful influence over the Trump campaign -- including digital strategy and top-level hires -- and carried that clout into the White House.

Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump, is a senior White House adviser
His father, Charles, founded Kushner Companies in 1985 and made his fortune as a New Jersey property mogul.
A controversial figure, Kushner senior received a prison sentence in 2005 for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and witness tampering.
At the time, he admitted setting up his own brother-in-law with a prostitute, secretly filming the liaison, and sending the tape to his sister in an effort to dissuade them from testifying against him.
The man who prosecuted Charles Kushner was the former US Attorney for New Jersey and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie.
Jared Kushner is reported to have been involved in counselling Trump to choose Mike Pence as his running mate, over Mr Christie.

What do we know about Anbang?
China's Anbang Insurance Group was founded in 2004. 

It is now one of the country's corporate goliaths with an increasingly large international portfolio and interests ranging from banking to traditional Chinese medicine.
The firm first came to prominence in 2015 when it bought New York's landmark Waldorf Astoria hotel for $1.95bn (£1.35bn), then the biggest US real estate deal by a Chinese buyer.

Barack Obama refused to stay at the Waldorf Astoria after it was sold to Anbang in 2015

Following the acquisition, then President Barack Obama refused to stay at the Waldorf Astoria during a UN general assembly gathering, citing security concerns.
Anbang has been making an aggressive push into the US property market over the last few years but little is known about the company.
In April 2016, the firm unexpectedly abandoned a $14bn (£9.75bn) takeover offer for Starwood Hotels, ending a three-week bidding war with Marriott. 

According to reports at the time, there were questions over its financing sources.
The company now claims to have total assets of more than 1.9tn yuan ($300bn, £240bn).

What are Angbang's political connections?
Anbang chairman Wu Xiaohui is considered one of the best politically-connected men in China, having married the grand-daughter of former leader, Deng Xiaopeng.

Anbang chairman Wu Xiaohui (left) is one of China's most politically-connected businessmen

Mr Wu, 49, is considered "reclusive" but in 2015 he appeared at a Harvard event in Beijing, where he spoke about his firm's investment strategy.
"We must win the first battle and every battle thereafter, as we are representing Chinese enterprises going global," he said.
Company records have also shown members of the board to include the son of a top military commander under former leader Mao Zedong and the son of China's former prime minister Zhu Rongji.

Are international deals a problem for Trump?
Trump's overseas business interests invite questions of whether his foreign policy decisions are directed by US interests or by his own -- or his family's -- business interests.
A section of the US Constitution known as the Emoluments Clause restricts what US presidents can accept from foreign governments.
America's founding fathers included this to prevent US leaders from being beholden to foreign governments.
After Mr Trump was elected in early November he spoke over the phone with Argentine President Mauricio Macri. 

After that call, the Trump Organization issued a press release indicating that Trump Tower Buenos Aires -- which had been waiting permit approval to be built -- was a done deal.
In January, Donald Trump said he had formally given "complete and total" control of the Trump Organization's businesses to his two sons in a bid to avoid conflicts of interest.
But meetings with Indian business partners and current projects in places like the Philippines and Brazil are also raising questions about what the power of the presidency could do for the Trump brand's international negotiating power.

China's Dirty Money

U.S., EU Say 'No' To China Buying The World
By Gordon G. Chang

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, acting as if on cue, are moving to block acquisitions of local businesses by Chinese companies.
Berlin, long open to Beijing’s investments, has just retracted its clearance of the $729 million purchase of chipmaker Aixtron by Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund.
The move came just days before Berlin proposed EU rules giving member states the authority to stop Chinese takeovers in strategic sectors, especially when the potential acquirers are state entities. “We need to have the powers to really investigate deals when it is clear that they are driven by industrial policy or to enable technology transfers,” said Deputy Economics Minister Matthias Machnig.
Current German law permits the government to stop acquisitions of only defense companies, IT security firms, and businesses handling state documents.
German officials are not the only group worried. 

China’s largest foreign acquisition looks like it might run aground in Brussels. 

EU antitrust regulators have started a review of China National Chemical Corp.’s bid to buy Syngenta, the Swiss agribusiness giant, for $44 billion.
Even not counting the Aixtron and Syngenta deals, European regulators have blocked almost $40 billion in Chinese takeovers of businesses since the middle of 2015 according to Grisons Peak, an investment bank.
The blocking of acquisitions comes after a wave of Chinese investment. 

Grisons Peak puts the highpoint of China’s purchases at $95.6 billion in the first quarter of this year. Since then, takeovers have trended down, with just $49.4 billion in Q2 and $46.1 billion in Q3.

In the U.S., this month it was reported that, due to concerns raised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, Blackstone Group called off the sale of Hotel del Coronado to China’s mysterious Anbang Insurance Group.
CFIUS, as the Federal interagency body is known, was also thought to be responsible for the killing of the sale of the lighting-components business of Royal Philips NV to a Chinese group led by GO Scale Capital for $2.8 billion in January.
So far, the U.S. has welcomed Chinese capital. 

As the Rhodium Group has reported, Chinese entities invested $18.4 billion in the U.S. in the first half of 2016, almost three times the $6.4 billion in the same period a year earlier and more than that invested all last year.
That upward trend—Rhodium calls it “tripling down on America”—may not last long. 

Ali Meyer of the Washington Free Beacon, the online news site, reports that the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in its next annual report, will recommend that Congress give CFIUS the authority “to bar Chinese state-owned enterprises from acquiring or otherwise gaining effective control of U.S. companies.”
“The Chinese Communist Party continues to use state-owned enterprises as the primary economic tool for advancing and achieving its national security objectives,” notes the “final draft” of the Commission’s report. 

“There is therefore an inherently high risk that whenever a state-owned enterprise acquires or gains effective control of a U.S. company, it will use the technology, intelligence, and market power it gains in the service of the Chinese state, to the detriment of U.S. national security.”
There are many reasons for the concern in the EU and America over Chinese investment, but a common theme, as Commission member Larry Wortzel notes, is fairness. 

“There is no reciprocity,” he told the Free Beacon. 

“While Chinese companies can buy U.S. or Western companies, American and other Western companies are barred from buying key sector state-owned enterprises, if not all state-owned enterprises.”
And in Berlin the business community, which is skeptical of new curbs on Chinese investment, has expressed the same general concern. 

“The European economy must be allowed to do in China what the Chinese are allowed to do in Europe,” said Ulrich Grillo, head of BDI, a German industry association, to the Financial Times.
For decades, Washington, Brussels, and other capitals have not insisted on fair treatment for their companies, largely because of the lure of the Chinese market, but now that market is showing signs of softness in most segments.
Perhaps the best proof of the softness in China is the rush by Chinese entities to buy foreign assets. Although some acquisitions by state and private enterprises seem to be at the direction of the state, many deals are evidently not.
Last year, net capital outflow could have been as much as the $1 trillion reported by Bloomberg. Beijing has tried to staunch the outbound flow with drastic measures, but this year the outflow could be close to that staggering figure.
The outflow will undoubtedly pick up as the renminbi continues its decline.

So far this year, the Chinese currency is down 4.4% against the greenback. 

The yuan will almost certainly weaken further when American interest rates go up, as Fed Chair Janet Yellen signaled in September, and as the Chinese central bank decreases support.
The fall of the renminbi tells us the Chinese people have lost confidence in their economy and society. 

A study just released by Hurun Report states over 60% of China’s rich plan to invest in overseas residences in the next three years.