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CalPERS Ignores Rep. Jim Banks’ Questions on CIO’s Links to - China’s Thousand Talents Spying

Posted: Feb 22nd, 2020 - 2:03 pm

WASHINGTON—California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) officials failed to answer a congressman’s questions about its Chief Investment Officer’s (CIO) links to a Chinese program the FBI says is a spy tool.

“CalPERS failed to answer two fundamental questions raised in my letter to Governor [Gavin] Newsom,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) told The Epoch Times Friday.

Banks was referring to his Feb. 12 letter to Newsom concerning CalPERS CIO Yu Ben Meng’s “long cozy” relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“First question: Is Mr. Meng a member of the Thousand Talents Program, something the FBI called a ‘non-traditional espionage program?’

“Second question: Since Meng came back as Chief Investment Officer of CalPERS, has CalPERS invested in companies that are affiliated with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army?”

The Indiana Republican also said he wants “clarification from Mr. Meng about what he meant when he told the Chinese Communist rag People’s Daily that his ‘roots were in China,’ and why he said that if he got ‘an opportunity to serve the motherland, such responsibility and honor cannot be compared to anything.’”

Banks said CalPERS’s massive investments in China were estimated in 2018 to be $3.1 billion in at least 172 Chinese firms. He also noted that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently told a meeting of the nation’s governors that included Newsom that CalPERS “is invested in companies that supply the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that put our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines at risk.”

Banks further said in his letter that “CalPERS holds shares of China Communications Construction Co. (CCCC), which has constructed PLA naval bases in the South China Sea, and in China Shipbuilding Industry Corp., a state-owned enterprise, and the largest manufacturer of Chinese naval ships.”

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