On Feb. 12, 50-year-old Angela Chao was found dead in her Tesla that was submerged in a pond on private property in Blanco County, Texas, according to the incident report from fire department EMS personnel. Ms. Chao was the sixth and youngest daughter of Chinese-American shipping magnate James Si-Cheng Chao, who founded the New York-headquartered Foremost Group in 1964. She had been CEO of the company since 2018 and was a founding member of The Asian American Foundation.
On Feb. 28, 82-year-old Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced his intention to step down from his leadership position in November.
Angela Chao was the sister-in-law of Mitch McConnell, and speculation has been rife about these two seemingly unrelated events. Is there any connection other than familial? Let us examine the topic.
Angela Chao
Angela Chao lived in Austin, Texas, and “served on the boards of American and Chinese groups, including the American Bureau of Shipping Council, the Bank of China, and a holding company for China State Shipbuilding,” MSN reported. Her connections to China loom large, particularly in her capacity as the former chair of the U.S. Risk and Management Committee of Bank of China USA, a director of the holding company for state-run China State Shipbuilding, and a former vice chair of the Council of China’s Foreign Trade. China State Shipbuilding Corp. (CSSC) builds ships for the People’s Liberation Army-Navy while the Council of China’s Foreign Trade is a promotional group created by Beijing to facilitate Chinese trade worldwide. Why did the CCP place such trust in Angela Chao?
Her father maintained connections to Chinese communists at the highest levels. As noted here, he “cultivated a close relationship with Jiang Zemin, a former schoolmate from Shanghai” who later became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the fifth communist leader of China from 1993–2003. The rise of the Foremost Group mirrored the rise of Jiang in the CCP hierarchy. There are no such things as coincidences.
Lastly, according to China Insights, the Chao family “is known in overseas Chinese circles as ‘The First Chinese American Family,’” with Mr. Chao known as the “Chinese Ship King.” That moniker was well-earned.
Mitch McConnell
Mr. McConnell will step down in November as the longest-serving party leader ever in the U.S. Senate. He was first elected to the Senate in 1985 and rose to Republican minority leader in 2007 and later majority leader in 2015 before reverting to minority leader in 2021. He married his second wife, Elaine Chao, in February 1993. Together, they became an important political power couple in Washington, with Ms. Chao having served as U.S. Secretary of Labor from 2001–09 and Secretary of Transportation from 2017–21.
In his 2018 book “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” investigative journalist Peter Schweizer noted that Mr. McConnell had hardline positions on communist China before his marriage to Ms. Chao. That seemed to change just a year after their marriage, and in 1994, he was invited by CSSC to meet then-Party leader Jiang Zemin and Vice Premier Li Lanqing as arranged by Ms. Chao’s father, Mr. Chao. As reported by the New York Post, Mr. Schweizer maintained in his book that Mr. McConnell “would increasingly avoid public criticism of China” as additional meetings and visits were conducted over the years. Perhaps that shift was facilitated by a multimillion-dollar “gift” from Mr. Chao to the McConnells in 2008 that increased Mr. McConnell’s net worth nearly tenfold.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) participates in a mock swearing-in as his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, holds a Bible, in the Old Senate Chamber at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 3, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)
Other McConnell gifts to China over the years included the following, as documented by Mr. Schweizer:
He defended communist China in its actions against Hong Kong and Taiwan.
He claimed that “the United States needed to be ‘ambiguous’ as to whether we would come to the defense of Taiwan if attacked by China.”
When needed to continue China’s most-favored-nation status with the United States, he cosponsored S.2277, which removed the requirement that China had to demonstrate progress on human rights after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Ms. Chao, for her part while Secretary of Labor, opposed a petition filed against China on the subject of workers’ rights based on the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 while also criticizing a bipartisan congressional report citing Chinese espionage against the United States.
A moderate Republican, Mr. McConnell clashed with populist President Donald Trump on various policy issues, including China tariffs and closing the border, to the point of threatening the president with impeachment if he pardoned Julian Assange in the final hours of his presidency, as reported by Tucker Carlson.
Dots and Questions
Are there any connections between Angela Chao’s death and Mr. McConnell’s upcoming relinquishing of his job as Republican minority leader in the Senate?
NTD reported that officials have been slow to release additional information about the incident and that her family allegedly blocked an autopsy, leading to “speculation about the circumstances surrounding Ms. Chao’s death.” NTD cited a YouTube video by Lei’s Real Talk, who has been an independent reporter of the “latest geopolitical events concerning China” since 2020. A number of points were made in that Feb. 22 report, as well as in other news reports since then:
The “suspicious death” took place at a ranch that is owned by a corporate entity connected to her husband, venture capitalist Jim Breyer, according to CNBC. Her death is under a criminal investigation, as reported by the Daily Mail.
There is a surveillance video of Angela Chao’s car going into reverse and “aggressively backing over a significant obstacle.” The Daily Mail reported on March 1 that “[police] refuse to release the 911 call and video evidence” associated with the incident.
General information about identity, time, and place of death was not released to the media per standard practice, as noted by USA Today on Feb. 21. Further information is possibly being withheld because of an ongoing investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death.
The death took place one week after IDG Capital was listed as a “Chinese military operation,” which her husband Jim Breyer’s venture capital firm had heavily invested in. As reported by the House Select Committee on the Strategic Cooperation between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party on Feb. 8. Mr. Breyer’s net worth is estimated at $1.5 billion.
These circumstances may have been unremarkable, but that has not yet been determined, and there are other interesting coincidences.
China Insights noted that the Foremost Group “placed an order worth $168 million with a subsidiary of the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation.” This was confirmed by Ship&Bunker on Jan. 26 as an order for “four 82,200 DWT duel fueled bulkers capable of running on methanol from CSSC Chengxi Shipyard.”
Angela Chao’s position as a director of China State Shipbuilding Corporation was unique. No ordinary member of the CCP would have the qualifications or opportunity to become a member of a state-run enterprise that is part of a military-industrial enterprise in China.
China Insights reported that Beijing-based Chinese media Caixin Global was the first to report Ms. Chao’s death by claiming that her car was hit by a truck while on her way to a business meeting in Austin, Texas. She supposedly died at the scene, and the truck driver was arrested for manslaughter. Caixin Global is backed by former Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan and reports the state’s geopolitical narrative, not sensational news stories. How did Caixin Global—half a world away!—scoop U.S. media on the story, even if the details were wrong? Another coincidence!
Angela Chao was dismissed as an independent director of the Bank of China in 2022 after relations between the bank and Evergrande soured. The Bank of China (BOC) seized Evergrande’s assets beginning in 2021 as Evergrande failed to repay its debt. The BOC also reported Evergrande’s regulatory violations to relevant CCP anti-corruption authorities. Evergrande’s Xu Jiayin fought back by making default allegations against the BOC and disclosing other embarrassing insider information, including alleged scandals of then-BOC President Liu Liange.
Was the Caixin story intended to send a message to the Jiang Zemin faction (the “Shanghai clique” in China)? The Hong Kong head of the BOC, the founder of the Lenovo Group, and members of the now-defunct Taishan Club, a chamber of commerce-type group that dominated certain sectors of the Chinese economy and represented the wealthiest people in China, could have been some of the intended recipients of such a message.
Concluding Thoughts
On Feb. 29, CNBC reported that the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office wrote a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that included the statement, “Although the preliminary investigation indicated this was an unfortunate accident, the Sheriff’s Office is still investigating this accident as a criminal matter until they have sufficient evidence to rule out criminal activity.”
The letter further states that “this incident was not a typical accident.”
Then there were Mr. McConnell’s cryptic remarks about his sister-in-law’s passing as he announced stepping down on Feb. 28.
“Perhaps it is God’s way of reminding you of your own life’s journey to reprioritize the impact of the world that we will all inevitably leave behind,” he said.
What does “reprioritize the impact of the world” mean? Is he sidelining himself because of the Caixin Group’s message?
Or is Mr. McConnell getting out ahead of the Senate posse that has become disenchanted with his leadership of late? After the debacle of the super-secret border deal that went down the tubes, his credibility is decidedly waning, but this is a way for him to retain a modicum of power for another eight months, albeit in a decidedly weakened lame-duck status.
Certainly, there is more than meets the eye about Angela Chao’s death and Mr. McConnell stepping down as Republican minority leader in the Senate. We will have to wait for the completion of the criminal investigation into her death to learn more.
The end.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated which capital firm was listed as a Chinese military operation. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.
