Feinstein has denied that her husband, San Francisco financier Richard C. Blum, has investments in China.
In May, before she voted for a measure that normalized trade with China, she said through a spokesman that Blum had divested of his last holdings in mainland China in 1999.
Blum declined to be interviewed. Via a spokesman, the fi
ancier said he has no financial interest in mainland China.
In May, Feinstein's office "said Mr. Blum had divested all investments in mainland China, and that is correct," Blum's spokesman Owen Blicksilver wrote in an e-mail from New York.
Nevertheless, details of the transactions as described by Blum seem at odds with Feinstein's assertions.
The sale of the Hong Kong realty didn't occur until August, three months after Feinstein said her husband had gotten out of China. And in her statement, Feinstein said Blum had gotten rid of his investments - never mentioning that he had put them in trust.
As she once recounted in a speech to the Senate, Feinstein's official contacts with China date back to 1979, the year before her marriage to Blum, when she established a sister-city relationship between San Francisco and Shanghai. Over the years, she has made a series of visits to China, becoming close to then-Shanghai Mayor Jiang Zemin, now China's president.
After she was elected to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein began boosting trade as the key to improved U.S.-China relations.
In 1994, when the Senate was considering withdrawing most favored nation trade status from China because of human-rights abuses, Feinstein called the move "counterproductive."
And, as the memory of Tiananmen faded, Blum contemplated new ventures in China, setting up a tangle of holding companies, limited partnerships and other investment vehicles ultimately linked to his investment bank.
Among them was the Newbridge Capital investment firm, described in a press release as an "emerging markets private equity fund" jointly founded by Blum's bank and Texas Pacific Group, a firm chaired by David Bonderman, a Fort Worth investment banker and Feinstein political donor.
Blum said his China investments comprised only a small percentage of his bank's business. Nevertheless, the issue has proved politically awkward for Feinstein, and she has repeatedly sought to distance herself from her hus
band's financial affairs and rebut allegations that she has a conflict of interest when it comes to Senate matters involving China.
Nevertheless, in May, when the permanent trade status measure was headed for a vote, Campbell raised the issue again. He accused Feinstein of failing to make full disclosure of Blum's China investments and implied Blum could benefit financially from the measure, which Campbell supported.
"Do you and your family have any holdings in China?" Campbell asked. ". . . Do they stand to benefit from China's entry into the World Trade Organization."
Feinstein responded through her spokesman Kuwata, who gave a series of interviews in which he said Campbell was wrong because Blum had already dumped all China holdings.
"Neither Dianne nor her husband have any holdings in mainland China," he was quoted in the Chronicle on May 19.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Husband-invested-in-China-as-Feinstein-pushed-3051244.php