Global Courant 2023-04-26 08:33:44
One of the national co-chairs of President Biden’s recently announced 2024 reelection campaign has deep and long-standing ties to China’s communist government, which could potentially pose a problem for the president as analysts continue to warn of the threat China poses to the U.S. national security.
The Biden campaign announced Tuesday that former Disney and DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg will serve as one of its national co-chairs. Katzenberg, one of the Democratic Party’s most prolific fundraisers, and his wife donated more than $1.4 million to Biden’s 2020 campaign and super PAC, according to Federal Election Commission records. The Hollywood mogul also helped Biden raise millions of additional dollars by organizing fundraisers.
Katzenberg, the Democratic kingmaker who later founded the venture capital firm WndroCo, has an extensive history with China that could become problematic for Biden as the 2024 campaign progresses. Perhaps most notoriously, when Katzenberg was at DreamWorks in 2012, the company announced a billion-dollar deal with the Chinese government to build a production studio in Shanghai.
The deal, which effectively increased the number of American films that could be released in the Chinese market each year, came just days after then-Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping met with then-President Barack Obama in Washington. Xi, now the head of China’s ruling Communist Party, traveled to Los Angeles after the Obama meeting, where he met Katzenberg and both men attended a deal-signing ceremony.
Dan-DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg attends the premiere of “The Croods” Beijing on April 18, 2013 in Beijing, China. (Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images)
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Biden also played a pivotal role in boosting Hollywood’s entry into Chinese markets during the Obama administration, meeting Xi several times during the Chinese leader’s 2012 trip to the US – with Katzenberg making frequent appearances.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the DreamWorks executive was seen dining with Xi at a State Department welcome lunch in Washington, sitting right behind the Chinese leader at a Lakers game in Los Angeles, and “hanging out in a nearby hallway with Disney CEO Robert Iger to offer last-minute advice as Biden struck a deal in which China promised to significantly expand its market for American films.”
On the last day of Xi’s trip, the China-DreamWorks deal was closed, partially launching Oriental DreamWorks, a $330 million venture with Chinese companies to develop and distribute animated films in China.
Katzenberg’s presence at events with Xi reflected “the access Katzenberg had to the Obama administration,” Aynne Kokas, author of the book “Hollywood Made in China” and a film industry scholar, told the Times, noting that the Hollywood producer had raised millions of dollars. for the Obama-Biden ticket.
However, the deal led to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into DreamWorks Animation and other studios for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by allegedly bribing Chinese officials to gain access to the Chinese market. Little information has been published about the probe.
Then Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (2nd left), then California Governor Jerry Brown (2nd right), then Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (right), and then DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg (2nd row , right). the Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns NBA basketball game on February 17, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
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The collaboration between China and DreamWorks Animation under Katzenberg led to projects such as “Kung Fu Panda 3.” The announcement of DreamWorks’ participation in a film about Tibet, a region where China is accused of human rights abuses, has sparked controversy and criticism. Katzenberg emphasized in interviews at the time that the book the film would be based on was not political, that there is “no secondary agenda” and that the story has all the makings of a “blockbuster”. However, the project was eventually canceled, reportedly because Katzenberg’s company could not agree with the producer who owned the rights to the book.
When asked “why China” in a 2013 interview with the Financial Times, Katzenberg said the question was “very, very easy” to answer.
“It had really become an explosively exciting marketplace for us, for movies,” said Katzenberg. “It’s experiencing spectacular growth. It will almost double in 24, 30 months.”
He also told the Financial Times that the Shanghai deal needed Xi’s personal approval to go ahead.
According to Katzenberg, he visited China every month for years while running DreamWorks Animation.
“I’ve been going to China every month for the past two and a half years because it’s a place of incredible opportunity right now,” he said in 2014. “We’ve got enough characters and stories to create a unique, new kind of theme. create. park experience. We are building an animation studio in the middle of Shanghai called ‘Dream Center’.”
US President Joe Biden, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands before their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Monday, November 14, 2022, in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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The Hollywood mogul and top Democrat fundraiser continued his connections with China after stepping down from his top job at DreamWorks in 2016.
Two years later, for example, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba was among those who contributed a first-billion dollars for Katzenberg’s WndrCo to launch a mobile-first shortform content venture called NewTV.
Then, in late 2020, in the wake of Biden’s victory in the presidential election, Katzenberg and Disney CEO Bob Iger were reportedly the leading candidates to become the US ambassador to China. While neither was ultimately tapped for the role, lawmakers at the time slammed Biden for considering turning to Hollywood for the American headman representing his main rival.
“It would condone Disney’s excessive cooperation with Xinjiang authorities overseeing concentration camps,” Rep. tweeted. Mike Gallagher, R-wis., who now serves as chairman of the new Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. “This is a great way to destroy the growing bipartisan consensus on the CCP’s blatant human rights violations.”
Going forward, Katzenberg’s ties to China could prove problematic for the Biden campaign as the Chinese government launches global investigations into humanitarian concerns.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have determined that China is committing genocide against the Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, in the Xinjiang region.
Jerry Bruckheimer (L) and Jeffrey Katzenberg attend a basketball game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers at the Crypto.com Arena on March 17, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
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Since 2017, the Chinese government has reportedly imprisoned more than 1 million Uighurs in concentration camps where, according to leaked documents from China, detainees are subjected to rape, torture, forced labour, brainwashing and forced sterilization.
US officials have also increasingly called China the biggest threat to US national security.
“There is no question that the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ideas, our economic security and our national security is the Chinese communist government,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said at an event at Texas A&M University earlier this month. . “The current Chinese regime will do everything they can to steal what they can’t create and silence the messages they don’t want to hear, all in an effort to outshine us as a global superpower and establish world order. more friendly to their determined authoritarian regime.”
Wray reiterated the recent conclusion by US intelligence chiefs that China poses the “most serious threat” to US security.
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The American people seem to share that sentiment. According to recent Fox News polls, more than half of voters see China as the country posing the greatest risk to the US, and a large majority of Americans believe China is a major threat. Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll found that only 15% of Americans have a positive view of China.
Neither the Biden campaign nor Katzenberg responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment for this story asking if the Hollywood mogul’s ties to China could be problematic for Biden’s re-election.
Aaron Kliegman is a political reporter for Fox News Digital.
