U.S. public opinion has recently focused on the interests of former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s Family and powerful Communist Party members. A recent hot topic is the relationship between the “young princess” of the Chao family, Anji Chao, and IDG Capital Partners, an investment firm, and Wang Qishan, Vice President of the Chinese Communist Party.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Zhao Xiaolan
A secret conversation between Zhao Xiaolan and Wang Qishan, who had turned their backs during the October 22, 2019, ceremony for the accession of Japan’s Emperor Tokujin, was once videotaped and hotly circulated on the Internet. But there are other levels of interaction between Zhao’s family and Wang Qishan, who is seen as a representative of the Communist Party’s powerful elite.
David Barboza, former chief correspondent for the New York Times in Shanghai, tweeted on March 9 about IDG Capital: “IDG had the earliest stake in Tencent. It had bought the original shares of Baidu. It has also invested in Poundland, Ape Coaching, Yuanfu Island, and Shangtang Technology. It’s an American company, but now owned by the Chinese. Most of its partners are American, including Jim Breyer.”
The Jim Breyer mentioned here is none other than the husband of the Zhao family’s youngest daughter, Anji Zhao.
As we all know, Zhao’s eldest daughter, Zhao Xiaolan, is married to Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate. Jim Blair is also the husband of Angie Chiu, who was appointed as her father’s successor and is a deputy director of Formosa Group.
Jim Blair is 12 years older than Angie Chiu and has three children with his ex-wife. He is married to Jo and has not yet had any children.
Blair invested in Facebook as its second largest shareholder when it had only 10 employees, and served on Facebook’s board of directors from 2005 to 2013, and was the first chairman of Facebook’s compensation committee.
Breyer is the founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, a partner at Accel Partners, and has served as chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, the Western Venture Capitalists Association, and has been asked to serve on the boards of Dell, Walmart, Murdoch News Corporation, and is chairman of Walmart’s Strategy and Finance Committee. In 2013, he joined the Board of Directors of 21st Century Fox as a member of the Nominating Committee.
A quick review of the data shows that the above-mentioned multinational companies and groups have all coveted huge profits in recent years and are committed to developing the Chinese market. Although Facebook is not allowed to enter China, it has been tainted by the scandal of assisting the Chinese Communist Party in monitoring speech overseas.
The “young son-in-law of the Zhao family” has been working with IDG Capital Partners since around 2005, investing in Chinese tech startups. At the Time, IDG Capital Partners was said to be the first foreign investor to tap the Chinese market, having invested in Baidu, Tencent, Sohu and Ctrip, and was a shareholder in Xiaomi. By 2017, however, IDG Capital had been acquired by China’s Pan Ocean, becoming a thoroughly Chinese company in which the Zhao family still has a huge stake.
When it comes to IDG, it is impossible not to mention its Xiong Xiaogong. He is the founding partner of IDG Capital and the global executive vice president of IDG Capital’s US-based Data Group (IDG). A report in the New York Times said Xiong was instrumental in introducing Breyer as an investor in the capital.
Xiong, who is known as the godfather of investment, accompanied Wang Qishan on a fishing trip in the U.S., founded the Harvard China Forum and is a “white glove” of the Chinese Communist Party’s power elite, according to an earlier tweet.
The “Zhao family,” Jim Blair and Xiong Xiaogu, link the U.S. political class to the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful elite.
Blair is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. The honorary chairman of the committee is former Premier Zhu Rongji, and both Wang Qishan and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are honorary members. Its status and utility are evident.
Zhu Rongji had met with members of the advisory board, including Jim Blair, in Beijing on Oct. 12, 2018, accompanied by Wang Qishan and Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan.
Photos of the meeting scene drew attention. Observers say the photo shows Jim Blair, the Zhao family’s son-in-law, next to Zhu Rongji, who, judging by his position, is more important to the CCP than Paulson.
Wang Qishan meets with Jim Blair and a line of advisers in Beijing on Oct. 17, 2019. The meeting was reported by the Communist Party’s official media, Newswire.
Just five days after this meeting, on Oct. 22, Wang Qishan arrived in Japan, and the aforementioned scene of Wang Qishan whispering with Zhao Xiaolan ensued.
Observers believe that Zhao Anji, who has both Chinese and English backgrounds and is not bound by the status of a government official, is the perfect candidate to navigate between politics and business, China and the United States. The U.S. media’s focus on Zhao Xiaolan and the McConnell family is actually about the broader interests of the Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. political and business communities.
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