Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants the U.S. government to exert closer scrutiny of China’s Dalian Wanda Group, an entertainment conglomerate with ties to the Communist government in Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The Wanda Group has been on a buying binge in the past few years, snapping up American and European movie-theater chains and other entertainment properties. Earlier this fall, it announced plans to acquire Dick Clark Productions, a television production company based in Santa Monica, California.
“I am concerned that these acquisitions reflect the strategic goals of China’s government,” Mr. Schumer wrote Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, reported the Journal, which had obtained a copy of the letter.
“You can be certain that the new Congress in 2017 will work on legislation to further expand CFIUS oversight authority,” the New York Democrat added, referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a Treasury Department office that scrutinizes foreign purchase of American companies for potential risks to U.S. national security.
In September, the Journal noted, “16 members of the House of Representatives asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether CFIUS’s authority has kept up with the expanding scope of foreign investment in the U.S.”
In early October, Texas Republican Congressman John Culberson, who chairs a House subcommittee charged with oversight of foreign commerce, sent a similar letter to John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, in which he requested the senior Justice Department official provide recommendations some “legislative options Congress may consider to ensure transparency [and] full disclosure” so as “to mitigate … foreign propaganda influence over American media[.]”
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