Feinstein, Husband Hold Strong China Connections
By GLENN F. BUNTING
MARCH 28, 1997
WASHINGTON — On Capitol Hill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has emerged as one of the staunchest proponents of closer U.S. relations with China, fighting for permanent most-favored-nation trading status for Beijing.
At the same time, far from the spotlight, Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, has expanded his private business interests in China–to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.
For years, Feinstein and Blum have insisted that they maintained a solid “firewall” between her role as an influential foreign policy player and his career as a private investor overseas.
But such closely coinciding interests are highly unusual for major figures in public life in Washington. And now, as controversy heats up over improper foreign influence in the U.S. political process, the effectiveness of the firewall between those interests could be called into question.
On Thursday, after he was interviewed by The Times about his China business, Blum announced that he will donate future profits from his personal investments there to his nonprofit foundation to help Tibetan refugees. “This should remove any perception that I, in any way, shape or form benefit from or influence my wife’s position on China as a U.S. senator,” Blum said.
In 1992, when Feinstein entered the Senate, Blum’s interests in China amounted to one project worth less than $500,000, according to her financial disclosure reports. But since then, his financial activities in the country have increased.
In the last year, a Blum investment firm paid $23 million for a stake in a Chinese government-owned steel enterprise…
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-28-mn-43046-story.html