In 2012, Steve Wynn, the casino mogul, made a $50 million deal in Macau with two mysterious individuals —Ho Ho and Ho Hoi.
For nearly 20 years, their identities have been a puzzle. Finally, after a months-long
@thewirechina
investigation, I have answers:
One month before Sam Altman was pushed out of OpenAI, he brokered a deal with G42, a UAE tech firm. On Monday,
@nytimes
reported that US intelligence is worried about G42's ties to China. But those ties run far deeper than previously reported. My piece:
This story has it all: Eric Adams, elite Chinese politics, the model who won Miss China, a high profile Chinese bribery case, Manhattan's Plaza hotel and
@KaiserKuo
talking about Beijing nightclubs⤵️⤵️
On Monday, Qin Hui pled guilty to illegally funneling money to New York politicians. I dove into his colorful history in China, which included running a notorious Beijing nightclub, amassing a media empire, and being involved in a high profile bribery case
China is often described as a black box. For this week's
@thewirechina
cover story, I profiled the researchers who are using inventive new methods — from government procurement documents, to satellite imagery, to patent filing data — to shine a light in.
In 2017, KKR - the U.S. private equity giant - launched Cue Group in China. Three years later, after millions from U.S. pension funds poured into the company, Cue started promoting its ties to China's surveillance state. My investigation into KKR and Cue:
I profiled John Garnaut, the former China journalist-cum-Australian government official who contributed to a global China policy shift. Now, he is teaming up with Matt Pottinger & reinventing himself as a China whisperer for the private sector:
I spoke with
@RepGallagher
, the chairman of the new Select Committee on China, about preventing Taiwan's future from becoming Ukraine's present, selective decoupling, and how his friendship with Matt Pottinger shaped his views on China:
"I fear that people in the U.S.... are saying things not because they are analytically true, but because they are politically what needs to be said in order to get confirmed, or have a seat at the table, or be invited to meetings" My Q&A w/
@jessicacweiss
:
On Monday, Qin Hui pled guilty to illegally funneling money to New York politicians. I dove into his colorful history in China, which included running a notorious Beijing nightclub, amassing a media empire, and being involved in a high profile bribery case
Who are Ho Ho and Ho Hoi, the two brothers who struck a $50 million dollar deal in Macau with Wynn Resorts, the U.S. casino company?
We've spent months tracking them down, this is Part Two of my investigation
@thewirechina
:
We determined that the Ho Ho and Hoi were using aliases. In fact, they are brothers who grew up in Beijing, had multiple passports, deep ties to the Chinese military, offshore companies and indirect business connections to the relatives of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
ASML, the Dutch technology giant, is caught in the middle of the U.S.-China dispute over advanced chips. My piece on what the new export controls mean for a critical company in the supply chain:
Evergrande's Xu Jiayin is known for convincing important people — like Wen Jiabao's brother & Jack Ma — to back him and catch him when he falls. But with his company falling apart and the government cracking down, no one is stepping in to save him:
The DOJ alleged that Steve Wynn, who was previously finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, lobbied Trump to extradite Guo Wengui, the billionaire-turned-dissident. For more on the effort to extradite Guo, read
@DavidBarboza2
's story:
🏆
@northropkatrina
from
@thewirechina
wins the SOPA Award for Young Journalists for a standout and impactful body of investigative work on China's economic influence with the story "The $50 Million Question." Congratulations!
#SOPAwards2023
📰
It's a sensitive time for Mr. Wynn, who left his company in 2018 after sexual misconduct claims. The DOJ sued him in May to compel him to register as a foreign agent for China. The case was dismissed, but filings reveal his relationship w/ top Chinese security official Sun Lijun.
"It’s also important to recognize that there’s a significant number of people who have a different view of the future, and who are fighting actively in China today to create a different kind of China."
My interview w/
@iandenisjohnson
on his book Sparks:
Macau wasn't just any market for Wynn Resorts — by 2018, the Chinese gambling enclave would make up a shocking 75 percent of Wynn's revenue as Chinese high rollers flooded into the casinos. So they were eager to build this casino, and build it fast.
Many thanks to
@DavidBarboza2
&
@ckamarckfox
for excellent editing and support, and again, here is the link to Part 1 of our series:
The $50 Million Dollar Question:
Do you want to learn more about Ho Ho and Ho Hoi, the two well-connected Beijingers with indirect business ties to the family of Xi Jinping? Tune back in next Sunday for the second installment of this series, which will publish their original names and fascinating life stories.
From the very beginning, the deal was confusing. First, evidence emerged that Ho Ho didn't seem to have documented rights to the land in question. Second, the companies and terms of the deal evolved to eventually include a different company, controlled by Ho Hoi (not Ho Ho).
Cool to see
@thewirechina
reporting about the two men at the center of China's PLA linked balloon program cited in both
@nytimes
and
@WSJ
today!
In case you missed it, read the story about the balloon scientist and his financier:
If you’re looking for some weekend reading, and missed it from earlier this week, read my profile of John Garnaut. Far from a household name, Garnaut contributed to a global shift on China policy and is now a China whisperer for hedge funds:
A lot of people talk about the Great Firewall, but very few people actually understand it. I spoke with
@NP_tokumei
about his research on how the censorship system not only impacts China, but also structurally damages the globe's internet.
@thewirechina
It is also a sensitive time for Wynn Resorts. Two weeks ago, after a long bidding process, the company won a provisional license to continue operating on the island for the next 10 years, beginning in January. The final negotiations will occur over the next month.
The $4 billion Wynn Palace opened in 2016, and by then, Wynn faced significant regulatory scrutiny regarding its dealings in Macau (with no findings of wrongdoing). Most of that scrutiny related to Wynn's $135M donation to the University of Macau Development Foundation.
Wynn Resorts describes it as a simple real estate deal: It needed land to build the Wynn Palace, the "single most important project" in the company's history, & the government told the company there was a plot already earmarked for a man named Ho Ho. Wynn bought him out for $50M.
This story also illuminates Macau's impenetrable universe of high stakes dealmaking. As
@orvilleschell
put it, Macau "was the spark plug where foreign money & Chinese political power could intersect without tremendous scrutiny."
We did not find evidence that the $50M went to a Chinese political figure or a politician’s family member. But reconstructing this deal highlights just how important Macau is for U.S. casino firms. As Steve Wynn himself put it in 2014, “We are primarily a Chinese company.”
Finalists revealed for
#SOPAwards2023
: 🏆
@sopasia
is thrilled to share that we have received more than 800 entries in English & Chinese, while there were almost 20 in the Bahasa category. A hearty round of applause & congratulations to all our finalists!
But back to the original question, who are Ho Ho and Ho Hoi? We've spent months trying to answer this question by pouring over corporate records, land registries,
@ICIJorg
's Panama Papers, and court filings from Hong Kong, China and Macau. And what we found is pretty interesting.
Cool to see my
@thewirechina
story on the Chinese billionaire with a checkered history illegally funneling money to NY politicians co-published in
@THECITYNY
.
No paywall!
Qin Hui, the billionaire who pleaded guilty to illegally funneling donations to Mayor Eric Adams and other officials, operated a notorious nightclub, was involved in a bribery case and punished by the Chinese securities regulator.
Via
@TheWireChina
:
FSG was founded by Erik Prince, the notorious American mercenary, and backed by CITIC. Today, it is one of the premier Chinese private security companies - protecting Chinese companies operating in dangerous places. My story about the industry's boom:
Another interesting element is the involvement of Macau's chief executive/highest ranking official: Edmund Ho. He was the one to tell Wynn Resorts that it would need to partner with Ho Ho if it wanted to use the land and reportedly even gave the company Ho Ho's number.
In my interviews for this piece, the XPCC was likened to various elusive natural phenomena: an octopus, an iceberg, bamboo. But most people agreed on one thing: without understanding the XPCC, it's impossible to understand modern day Xinjiang.
The company told us that it conducted extensive due diligence into the companies and individuals involved, but declined to provide details about the results, citing Macau privacy laws. Regarding Ho Ho's lack of documented land rights, Wynn said this was not unusual in Macau.
There was also scrutiny into the land deal. In 2014, Macau's Commission Against Corruption announced it was investigating the deal, but interestingly, never released any findings or announced it was completed. Wynn Resorts says that it was not the subject of the investigation.
Intriguingly, a ten percent shareholder in Ho Ho's company was Cliff Cheong, a close family friend and former business partner of Edmund Ho, according to a deposition in an unrelated court case.
@thewirechina
spoke to Cheong, and he said he had no involvement in the Wynn deal.
This deal has attracted a fair amount of attention over the years and there has been some terrific reporting on it.
@Kate_OKeeffe
and
@Macau_Business
both wrote great stories about the deal in 2012, and the IUOE, the US union, published extensive research on it.
"When we do research on Chinese politics, we should always keep a few things in mind. The first is that we have had a very bad track record understanding Chinese politics on the outside as events were transpiring"
@JosephTorigian
interviewed by
@bcamcrane
Very exciting to see John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua at this week's U.S.-China climate summit holding the illustration of them from our
@thewirechina
piece about their personal relationship, and about the potential for climate cooperation (h/t
@LiShuo_GP
).
I wrote about balloons! The US government sanctioned 6 Chinese companies involved in the balloon program on Friday. Four of them are linked to two men: a military aerospace scientist and a tech investor.
My story on the powerful duo (not paywalled!):
“While their actions can sometimes seem aggressive — even bizarre — from the outside, they make perfect sense when seen from a domestic perspective,” an excellent except of
@PeterMartin_PCM
’s book about Chinese diplomacy in
@thewirechina
I spoke with
@SheenaGreitens
about China's definition of national security, why the November protests in China should concern the Communist Party, and why it is hard to explain China's security policies in Xinjiang:
I wrote about balloons! The US government sanctioned 6 Chinese companies involved in the balloon program on Friday. Four of them are linked to two men: a military aerospace scientist and a tech investor.
My story on the powerful duo (not paywalled!):
Reporting in China is always hard. But this year, with a wave of expulsions, detentions, and harassment, the foreign press corps was essentially wiped out. Here's my story about how we got to this point, and why it matters for the world
John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, the climate envoys for the U.S. and China, are tasked with ensuring the two countries cooperate on climate. In this
@thewirechina
story, I look at what that will actually look like w/
@ebinder21
:
"People don’t realize what’s online,”
@adrianzenz
said to me.“The flexibility of a single mind can penetrate China’s publicly available systems and elephantine bureaucracy.”
The US government is trying to stop China from selling chips to Russia that aid its war effort. It’s failing.
A new
@thewirechina
investigation shows the whack-a-mole nature of America's expansive sanctions regime:
Last week,
@thewirechina
published an investigation into a network of Shenzhen-based companies exporting chips to Russia. Today, the Commerce Department placed two of those companies on the Entity List.
If you missed my story, read it below⤵️
The US government is trying to stop China from selling chips to Russia that aid its war effort. It’s failing.
A new
@thewirechina
investigation shows the whack-a-mole nature of America's expansive sanctions regime:
“I don’t see any sign right now of any organized elite resistance to Xi. But while I can’t tell you what will happen, when it happens I won’t be surprised,” says
@SusanShirk1
in my interview for
@thewirechina
China’s first homegrown mRNA Covid vaccine, which was developed by two pharma companies and a military academy, was just approved for booster trials. Will having a mRNA vaccine change China’s covid zero approach?
From an insider trading probe to a failed takeover from Blackstone, it’s been a rough year for Soho. I wrote about how many see Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin — the husband-and-wife founders — as two more victims of Beijing’s crackdown on business moguls.
Eric Dai claims he exposed a Chinese scheme to acquire military technology. His Chinese business partner claims he stole $70 million.
This tale has it all: Operation Fox Hunt, chip wars, Guo Wengui, secret tapes, and an empty World Trade Center office:
“'NYU Shanghai, as far as I can tell, is the closest to an American university experience Chinese students will get in China,' says
@ehundman
. The question.. is if being 'close' to an American university standard is good enough"
@carrierana22
Wang Qishan, China's charismatic vice president, has many nicknames: 'fire brigade chief,' 'barbarian handler,' the 'Wayne Gretzky of Chinese bureaucracy.'
@eliotcxchen
and I delved into his fascinating history and uncertain future for our profile:
After a 6-month investigation,
@mckennapr
@lili_pike
and I found that 11 chemical factories in China likely emit greenhouse gases equal to the exhaust of 25 million cars. Read our piece about the climate catastrophe in
@insideclimate
here:
On Thursday, Gina Raimondo met with her Chinese counterpart — the 1st cabinet level meeting between the US & China in DC during the Biden administration.
Read my piece about the Commerce Department's surprisingly central role in China policy:
Today, I met with the Minister of Commerce for the People's Republic of China Wang Wentao. We discussed the 🇺🇸-🇨🇳 commercial relationship, opportunities for trade and investment, and the recent PRC actions taken against US companies operating in the PRC.
From the hold of a fishing boat in Alaska to a processing facility in Dalian, China, to a refrigerated container in Virginia and finally to Target's seafood aisle. Read
@eliotcxchen
on the counterintuitive global food supply chain:
After 2008, AVIC, the Chinese military contractor, went on a buying spree all across the US, in places like Duluth, MN and Saginaw, MI. Was the US government asleep at the switch? Or did it make sense? Read our story about the messy reality
@ebinder21
I have long admired
@JiayangFan
’s reporting on China for
@NewYorker
. This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing her about journalism, the tentacular nature of the CCP, and the symbol of Hong Kong:
Especially in light of recent boycotts against Western brands in China, this Q&A with
@ameliapangg
is a useful discussion of what U.S. consumers can be doing to promote better labor practices in China
TikTok’s owner, Bytedance, has been plagued by criticisms about censorship and data security. But now, in a bid to establish itself as a global company, it’s trying to shed its Chinese origins. My latest for
@thewirechina
:
The U.S government is poised to increase its scrutiny of the billions of American investment dollars flowing into Chinese high tech firms. But putting the policy into practice may be harder than many in Washington expect. My piece in
@thewirechina
:
Three months into bilateral cooperation between the US and China on fentanyl, it is clear that making a meaningful dent in the illicit drug supply in the US will require deep collaboration and compromise at a time when the two countries are wary of both.
China is exporting millions of Covid-19 vaccines to countries all across the world in desperate need. But they are also refusing to release much data about their efficacy. What will this mean for the world, and could it come back to haunt Beijing?
"His personal office at times sent suggestions to China’s leadership through an office in the Communist Party’s Central Committee that reported to Mr. Xi.... It was 'like writing love letters to a loved one, but not getting many responses'"
If you didn't read last week's story, go read it! It shows how the Ho brothers were virtually unknown in Macau, did not have documented rights to the land, and the original partner in the deal was a friend and former biz partner of Macau's chief executive:
7 years ago, Edward Snowden's leaked documents had an unintended impact in Beijing. Today, as most U.S.-China tensions revolve around technology, we're dealing with the consequences.
It's back to school season, and this year, American universities are seeing a drop in Chinese applicants. Especially for public universities, who have suffered from state funding cuts, this will have serious implications for their bottom line.
China is a leader in the global solar industry. But its state policy banks seem reluctant to finance overseas solar projects. Why? Read my latest for
@thewirechina
I had lots of fun talking with
@JohnDelury
about his latest book, Agents of Subversion, and the CIA's complicated history in China for this
@thewirechina
interview:
This fits into a broader trend: after the invasion, shipments of chips to Russia by Western electronics exporting nations sharply dropped off. But shipments from China and Hong Kong have helped Russia fill the gap. A useful graph using
@SilveradoPolicy
analysis:
Our investigation shows that the men were using aliases, and they were from an elite military family in Beijing. They have a maze of corporate holdings, both onshore and offshore, and indirect business connections to the family of Xi Jinping.
Two 7th century stone carvings on loan to the Met Museum were returned to China last month by the U.S. government, the latest of thousands of treasures China has repatriated.
My piece on China's efforts & and the prospect for future U.S. collaboration:
By wearing a Patagonia fleece, eating Heinz Ketchup, or texting on an iPhone, you may be using goods produced by forced labor from the Uighur population in China. Read my piece about how companies are dealing with the supply chain tangle in
@thewirechina
Bitcoin mining in China was on track to generate more carbon emissions than the entire nation of the Philippines or the Czech Republic. Now, the Chinese government is cracking down on the electricity intensive process:
Until this week, the Cue's own website even described a collaboration with a lab under the Ministry of Public Security. When I asked about it, Cue removed it from their webpage and denied any collaboration. KKR also denied any collaboration.
Analysts have looked at XPCC's ties to the solar supply chain.
@eliotcxchen
has done a nice job showing how it ties all the way to purchases in the UK, US and elsewhere. XPCC is a key spoke, in other words, in solar panel production
ANDE created a revolutionary rapid DNA test with US govt funding promising 'a faster way to save the world.'
My story on how the firm also sold its machine to Chinese public security, inviting questions about US tech's role in China's surveillance state:
Interesting case accusing two individuals of illegally obtaining semiconductor technology on behalf Chengdu GaStone Technology. Last year, I wrote a story involving another scheme to obtain semiconductor technology for the very same Chinese firm:
"I am trying to.. articulate a coherent theory of China policy, which I believe hopefully will be adopted by the Democratic Party...Gallagher has articulated his number of times, and I’m trying to do that for the Democratic Party."
My Q&A w/
@RepRoKhanna
:
Last week, the Biden administration went on an anti-Facebook blitz, calling out the company for providing a platform for vaccine misinformation. One of the things they specifically mentioned is that some of these information campaigns originate in China.
The
@ICIJorg
Pandora Papers contain more than 10 million documents from Belize, Cyprus, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands.
@DavidBarboza2
dug into the documents to explain why China, and the Chinese government, relies on the world of offshore finance:
Energy Vault, a California firm, is using China as a testing ground for its improbably technology: lifting 50,000 lb blocks in the air to store energy. Read more about the technology and how Neil Bush (George W. Bush's brother) helped them bet on China: