As the race for second place heats up, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have begun to play a game of "Who was cozier with Chinese business while governor?"
At least $18 million has been spent in the presidential race on TV ads mentioning China, according to AdImpact data, with Republicans accounting for 90 percent of that spending. Nearly $26 million has been spent on digital ads on the topic, though Republicans account for just 58 percent of that spending.
The latest ammunition in the fight comes from a recent Miami Herald report that reveals that DeSantis and committees affiliated with him have received $340,000 from Xianbin Meng, the CEO of a Tampa refrigerant company with direct backing from China, companies associated with Meng, and the companies' employees. Meng, the CEO of iGas USA, gave DeSantis more than $11,000 just three months ago.
DeSantis held a rally at iGas's Tampa complex last year. A state-controlled Chinese company owns roughly a third of iGas.
Meng's companies and employees have given more than $1.1 million in federal and state political contributions in the past five years. The report notes that the giving represents a "sharp increase" in political activity by the companies and employees.
The donations began as Congress weighed a bill to phase out the refrigerants that iGas imports from China. The bill passed, but Meng's company has "had some success pushing for changes to the implementation of the law," according to the report.
The DeSantis campaign dismissed the reporting as "silly in the face of his actions and record towards China as a governor."
That record includes signing bills preventing sensitive data from being stored on CCP-owned or affiliated servers and banning access to CCP-affiliated apps like TikTok on government devices. The governor also signed legislation preventing Chinese Communist Party affiliates from buying land near military bases.
But the Haley campaign has blasted DeSantis for having stayed quiet when Cirrus Aircraft, a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corp. (AVIC) of China, opened two new locations in Florida — including one 12.7 miles away from the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division.
While the federal government hasn't accused Cirrus of any wrongdoing, the U.S. imposed sanctions on AVIC in 2020 after finding it to be a possible national-security threat. AVIC makes fighter jets, helicopters, and drones for the Chinese military.
The DeSantis campaign told the New York Post that the governor "uniquely recognizes the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and spent his governorship working to end pre-existing state ties with China and build up protections against future Chinese incursions."
DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin then turned the attention toward Haley, who he said "spent her governorship courting Chinese businesses to South Carolina, calling them a friend, and failing to pursue corrective efforts to safeguard her state from the threat of the CCP."
Under Haley's leadership, Chinese investments in the Palmetto State more than doubled from $308 million in 2011 to almost $670 million in 2015, according to the Washington Post. Haley oversaw the greatest Chinese investment of any Republican governor in 2015, when adjusted for GDP, after having brought in more than $565 million in Chinese investment for the year. Haley oversaw a total of $1.43 billion in Chinese investment in the state.
The campaign defended the former governor's record. "Every governor running for president tried to recruit Chinese businesses to their state. Nikki Haley did it ten years ago. Ron DeSantis is aggressively recruiting Chinese companies now and just this month he scrubbed the Florida government website of proof of his recruitment," the campaign said in a statement to National Review.
"The question is who will take on China as Xi Jinping ups the ante, and the clear answer is Nikki Haley," the statement added.
DeSantis and the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down have specifically seized on Haley's role in recruiting a Chinese fiberglass company to the state, with the PAC claiming in an ad that she allowed the company to get "dangerously close" to the Fort Jackson military base and that she is "too dangerous to lead."
China Jushi, a partially state-owned company, announced an agreement with Richland County in 2016 to bring a manufacturing plant to the county that would create 400 new jobs and invest $300 million in the region.
Haley celebrated the agreement at the time as a "huge win for our state."
State-owned China National Building Material Company Limited owns almost 27 percent of China Jushi, according to the company's website. China Jushi has a Communist Party Committee with 618 members.
While the factory is roughly five miles from Fort Jackson, the Washington Post gave the Never Back Down ad "Three Pinocchios" over its claims about dangers. "There is no indication it is a spy center for China, as suggested by the ad's use of the phrase 'eyes and ears,'" the fact-check says.
The Never Back Down ad claims that Haley gave the company 197 acres of land for free. However, the contract involved only the county and the company and includes provisions that would require the company to pay back part of the land's $4.9 million value if the company did not invest an expected amount of money or create an expected number of jobs.
The South Carolina Coordinating Council for Economic Development provided $7 million in incentives for the deal. The council is chaired by the state's commerce secretary, who is appointed by the governor.
Asked during a campaign stop in Iowa last month why she "gave China thousands of acres of land in South Carolina," Haley replied, "Don't believe what you read on the internet. We didn't sell any land to the Chinese. But, yes, I recruited a fiberglass company."
South Carolina governor Henry McMaster told reporters of China Jushi, "As far as anybody knows, they've caused no trouble and pose no threat."
Haley said in 2012 that bringing Chinese companies to the state could help remind Americans what's it's like to have a "passion again" to "work with urgency."
"It reminds us of what this energy feels like . . . that we need to focus on that again," Haley said.
But now, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. has warned about the potential dangers of Chinese investments: "Chinese investors have bought nearly 400,000 acres of American land, much of it near military bases. I'll do everything in my power to prevent China from buying any more land and force it to sell what it already owns," she wrote for the Wall Street Journal in June.
Haley's campaign has fired back at DeSantis over his own record of courting Chinese business after reporting by The Messenger revealed that references to China were removed from the website of Enterprise Florida, a public-private partnership chaired by DeSantis.
The site scrubbed references to a Hong Kong office and efforts to recruit Chinese investment after the Washington Examiner reported on DeSantis's alleged ties to China.
While the site once had a page showing the group's board of directors, including DeSantis as the board's chairman, that page was later removed and began returning a "404 Page Not Found."
The DeSantis administration told the outlet "outdated information" was removed from the website and that Enterprise Florida ended its relationship with Chinese businesses earlier this year "upon the realization that companies on the Hong Kong stock exchange have become infiltrated with investments from China's military."
An ad by the pro-Haley Stand for America super PAC also accused DeSantis of voting to "fast-track Obama's Chinese trade deals." The Washington Post said the claim appeared to be false, giving it four Pinocchios.
The ad claims DeSantis gave millions to Chinese companies, though the cited Washington Times article makes no mention of DeSantis. It goes on to point out two votes DeSantis supported as a congressman in 2015, though one was a bipartisan budget passed to avert a government default and did not mention China. The second, the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015, extended Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), allowing a president to "fast-track" trade legislation. That bill passed with the support of 190 Republicans.
While DeSantis and Haley have trained their attacks on each other, front-runner Donald Trump's record of making amiable comments about China and doing business in the country has largely escaped scrutiny.
Trump, who owns 114 trademarks in China for possible business opportunities, according to financial filings released earlier this month, recently called Chinese president Xi Jinping a "very smart person" during a campaign rally in Iowa.
Trump said President Biden "walked up with a man who looks like a piece of granite, he's strong like granite, I know him very well, President Xi of China," referring to a meeting between Biden and Xi in San Francisco last week.
"He's a fierce person," Trump added. "Now the press doesn't like it when I say good things about him, but what can I say: he runs 1.4 billion people with an iron hand."
"He happens to be a very smart person," Trump said. "Our leader is a stupid person."
As DeSantis and Haley battle it out in the polls, the Florida governor has pulled two major endorsements in Iowa recently: Governor Kim Reynolds and Family Leader president Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Evangelical conservative.
"We need to find somebody who can win in 2024," Vander Plaats told Bret Baier on Tuesday night when he threw his support behind DeSantis, citing the GOP's less-than-stellar performance in the 2022 midterms.
Iowa-based pollster J. Ann Selzer told me DeSantis is "popular with Iowa Republicans" and noted that Vander Plaats has a record of endorsing eventual caucus winners.
"These endorsements get DeSantis much-needed attention, so likely to not hurt. We'll have to see if they help him enough to make [a] difference," Selzer said in a statement.
Iowa senate president Amy Sinclair, who has endorsed DeSantis herself, told me Reynolds and Vander Plaats "bring strong political organizations to the team that will take DeSantis's already historic ground game to the next level."
"Their endorsements tell Iowans that DeSantis is the proven conservative fighter who can beat Trump and Biden, and then lead America's revival," she said.
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