The financial investor and patron George Soros has sharply criticized Larry Fink and the investment company BlackRock, which he runs, for their China plans.
Soros sees a danger in the fact that BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager with around 8 trillion dollars in assets, is bringing a lot of money to China and thus supporting the head of state Xi Jinping and his increasingly repressive policies.
BlackRock's commitment harms America's security interests, Soros wrote in an article for the Wall Street Journal.
Winand von Petersdorff-Campen
Business correspondent in Washington.
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In fact, China is set to become a new investment focus for BlackRock. The American asset manager is the first foreign investor to be licensed by the Chinese government to operate a fund company in China, which it owns in a majority stake. That should give her access to private investors. In addition, BlackRock is campaigning for investors to weight China much more heavily in their portfolios. The country is no longer an emerging market and therefore deserves significantly more attention from globally oriented investors, argues the asset manager. Larry Fink himself wrote in his annual investor letter in the spring: “Many of our global customers look to BlackRock to help them invest in this market in terms of earnings opportunities and diversification opportunities.that offer Chinese investment products. ”According to BlackRock, only 3 percent of Chinese stocks and bonds are in foreign hands. The opening of the market for financial products was agreed in the US-Chinese trade agreement.
Soros argues that investing in China in the past may have been morally justified on the grounds that investors formed bridges to bring the countries closer together. But today the situation is completely different: China and the United States are engaged in a threatening conflict between a repressive and a democratic system. Anyone who invests money in China is helping Xi's regime, which oppresses its own population and acts aggressively internationally. In his contribution, Soros called on Congress to use new laws to limit the flow of money to China. The founder of the Open Society democracy foundation ignored the objection that BlackRock only invested in private Chinese companies. The regime regards all companies, whether state or private, as instruments of its policy.
Soros recalled that the government recently prevented Alibaba from issuing shares and taken disciplinary action against Chinese Uber clone DiDi. According to Soros' interpretation, Xi is trying to bundle funds for an impending power struggle in the coming year. Then he wants to establish himself as a leader for life. Western investors shouldn't help him with this.