TO BE FAIR, HE SHARES IT WITH MUCH OF OUR RULING CLASS AND MANY OF OUR UNIVERSITIES: Bloomberg’s China Conflict of Interest.
In a September 2019 interview with PBS’s Firing Line Bloomberg said: “The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China and they listen to the public.” Further, “Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.”
Bloomberg failed to mention that in 2013 Bloomberg News was caught in a scandal when it killed news stories revealing corruption related to Xi Jinping’s family members, prompting various reporters and editors to resign. It turned out that Bloomberg News leadership told the editors that stories about the families of politburo members were off limits.
When challenged by host Margaret Hoover of PBS on whether he really believes Xi is “responsive” to the democratic will of the people, Bloomberg doubled down. “The Chinese Communist Party looks at Russia and they look for where the Communist Party is and they don’t find it anymore. And they don’t want that to happen. So, they really are responsive.”
These absurd statements fly in the face of the what is happening in Xinjiang province with the forced imprisonment of nearly 2 million Uighur Muslims in “re-education” camps. The continuing government crackdown on the citizens of Hong Kong as well as the closing of innumerable Christian churches, jailing pastors and even rewriting Scripture. (Additionally, nearly 500,000 individuals are currently detained in “Black Jails” and mental health institutions without trial, charges or access to legal aid. Most recently, video has surfaced of the government’s reaction to the coronavirus by physically dragging victims or potential victims of the virus kicking and screaming into expansive state pens. . . .
As Josh Rogin of the Washington Post points out, among the ways Michael Bloomberg and his company Bloomberg LP make a considerable amount of money in China is not only through the extraordinarily profitable licensing of its financial software but via its massive Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index. Bloomberg LP is helping finance Chinese companies by sending billions of U.S. investor dollars into the Chinese bond market.
Follow the money.