Truth About Romney's Pro-China Involvement Surfaces

UPDATE for yesterday's post: As it turns out, Mitt Romney as governor was a wholly-owned subsidiary of China. Rep. Duncan Hunter, member of the House Armed Services Committee excoriated Romney in 2008, advising voters then to steer clear of a pro-China Romney. To this date Romney has failed address the problem, demonstrating further how unserious a candidate he is for Commander-in-Chief - although there's very lttle anyone could say to save himself from the inevitable disqualification this type of footsie with a hostile regime that has called for "exterminating the US population" brings.



From Newsmax, 2008:

"As the founder of Bain Capital, Governor Romney has an obligation to utilize his influence within the company to terminate the proposed merger between 3Com and Chinese defense contractor Huawei," said Hunter. "In light of China's refusal to port several American naval vessels last week, it is increasingly more important that American military technology be protected from foreign companies, such as Huawei, that are closely aligned with the Chinese government."

Hunter refused to endorse Romney in 2008 for this specific reason.

"This proposed deal, which Governor Romney can work to terminate should he choose to do so, is unpatriotic and damaging to national security," continued Hunter. As further detailed in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, Huawei has close ties to the military of communist China and allegedly aided Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. 

As mentioned yesterday, "Huawei [is] linked by the Pentagon and other key figures in national security as an espionage front group of Beijing's Ministry of State Security (MSS)." In 2007, the tech-industry news site Cnet noted that Huawei is run by a former PLA officer by the name of Ren Zhengfei.

Meanwhile, Ren has gone about building Huawei into a success story disregarding the usual corporate niceties. In 2000--three years before the WMD craze got us all nutso about taking out Saddam--the CIA accused Huawei of secretly selling a communications system to Iraq. In the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, Huawei and two other Chinese companies were singled out for carrying out "extensive work in and around Baghdad"--mainly telecommunication switches and the installation of fiber-optic cable.

The article goes on to mention Romney's involvement:

[...]Friday we learned that Bain Capital is paying $2.2 billion to acquire 3Com. Part of the deal involves China's Huawei Technologies, which will acquire a minority stake in 3Com.
And, oh, by the way, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor running for the Republican presidential nomination--he headed Bain Capital for 14 years.
Six degrees of separation. In this case only 2--but who's counting.

In a later interview with Fox News, Hunter went farther and told Chris Wallace, "I think Mitt Romney's a no-go for that reason alone".



A note of disclosure: As a Newt guy, I'm not telling you to vote for Newt, although he is the best candidate on national security and I do recommend you do; however, I think as long as you stay away from Romney, Huntsman, and Paul, your choice will not be a candidate who potentially does direct damage to our national security interests. I personally think Newt would agree with the principle that one of the most important things we can do as Americans is to keep more bad actors out of the White House.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.