Billionaire philanthropist and ex-hedge fund manager has urged US funds to eschew Chinese markets in recent op-eds
China’s mouthpiece Global Times has labeled Hungarian-born American billionaire George Soros a “global economic terrorist” in a tit for tat exchange playing out in dueling op-eds that underscore the rising temperature in US-China relations.
The article, published on September 4 and without citing any evidence, accused the hedge fund manager and philanthropist of providing finance to Hong Kong’s jailed newspaper owner Jimmy Lai to support the city’s anti-Beijing protests in 2019.
Soon thereafter, Soros penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that said New York-based BlackRock’s recent 6.7 billion yuan (US$1 billion) mutual fund investment in China was a “tragic mistake” and would likely lose money for the asset manager’s clients. Soros wrote the BlackRock investment “imperils the national security interests of the US.”
That followed an August 30 op-ed Soros published in the Financial Times that said Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on private enterprise has been “a significant drag on the Chinese economy” and “could lead to a crash.”
He said indices, including MSCI’s ACWI, ESG Leaders Index and BlackRock’s ESG Aware, have “effectively forced hundreds of billions of dollars belonging to US investors into Chinese companies whose corporate governance does not meet the required standard — power and accountability is now exercised by one man (Xi) who is not accountable to any international authority.”
The billionaire urged the US Congress to pass legislation limiting asset managers’ investments to “companies where actual governance structures are both transparent and aligned with stakeholders.” Previous reports said that Soros’ hedge fund had disposed all of its exposure to Chinese...
