Al Gore's Stealth Trip to China
DEALEY, SAM
Al Gore's Stealth Trip to China Between appearances on Letterman and NPR, guess where he had a photo-op. BY SAM DEALEY "IT'S UNFORTUNATELY TRUE," Al I Gore told the Washington Post Alast month,...
...To help pay Gore's undisclosed speaking fee, CDI sold photo-ops with the former vice president...
...This was not an official BusinessWeek-sponsored event," says Nancy Sheed, the magazine's spokeswoman in New York...
...For corporate sponsors who paid twice that, pictures with Gore were included in the package...
...Not that there's anything wrong with a little lunch between friends, but Gore's left-populist allies won't find such chumminess very convenient to their efforts to portray the Bush administration as uniquely cozy with Texas energy companies...
...Indeed, many in Hong Kong believe Chan's comfortable relationship with Beijing is responsible for the chapter's pro-Beijing slant...
...According to a Chinese-language website and the account in the South China Morning Post, the government think tank offered conference attendees the opportunity to have their pictures taken with Gore for 50,000 yuan ($6,000...
...I can tell you specifically, our contract says dnm-Strategies for BusinessWeek," says Cabrera, referring to the Hong Kong-based event organizer that counts the magazine among its clients...
...Basically, he spoke to business executives at a BusinessWeek forum," says Gore spokesman Jano Cabrera...
...But this all comes as news to BusinessWeek...
...For good measure, Cabrera prevailed on Richard Holbrooke, the former United Nations ambassador under Clinton and now the head of the Asia Society, to attest to the disinterested nature of Gore's China jaunt...
...We did not pay any of the speakers at the event...
...Chan is a Chinese-American tycoon who's made hundreds of millions in Hong Kong's dicey real estate market—a feat bespeaking cordial ties with the authorities in Beijing...
...And Gore's office isn't pleased to be asked about it...
...Yet the only mentions of his appearance were brief articles in Xinhua, China's official news agency, and in the South China Morning Post...
...There is a good cultural explanation for this: In China and elsewhere in the Far East, pictures with powerful leaders testify to guanxi, or connections, and can be used to attest to one's high status, or secure special treatment and favors from officialdom...
...Gore was in good company...
...And not just any board member...
...Although Gore was never convicted of any wrongdoing, he engaged in a host of risky schemes to raise campaign money...
...He sat on the board's audit committee, and is a named defendant in several shareholder lawsuits...
...The Gore camp insists the event was a BusinessWeek forum and that the vice president received no money from Chinese sources...
...But the real embarrassment was the money that changed hands...
...We did not pay any of the participants in the event...
...He's the president of the group's Hong Kong chapter and hosted the private pow-wow in his office...
...Maybe because the trip raises more questions than Gore's team wants to answer...
...We paid nothing to dnm to do this...
...Multiple calls to dnmStrate-gies directors were not returned...
...The fact that they're all running for cover and no one will give an honest answer about any of this is all the evidence you need to know it stinks to high heaven...
...He had no contact with Gore, and [Gore] was not invited to speak at the Asia Society by Chan...
...Except Ronnie Chan isn't just any member of the Asia Society, and he wasn't just any luncheon attendee...
...The fact that Chan was there is completely irrelevant," says Cabrera...
...If that was going on, it was without our permission and without us being aware," says Cabrera, who did not accompany Gore on the trip...
...Among the most striking was the notorious fundraiser at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights, California, that netted $166,750 through an illegal straw-donor scheme...
...A central theme in the event, as in other Clinton-Gore fundraising outreach efforts, was the desire by Asian donors to have their photographs taken with the president and vice president...
...BusinessWeek was also not aware that anybody had been invited on behalf of BusinessWeek to speak at the event...
...The following day, November 18, Gore traveled to Hong Kong for a private luncheon with Ronnie Chan and select members of the Asia Society's Hong Kong chapter...
...I'm not so much worried about McCarthyism as I am the coddling of totalitarianism," says Mark Simon, a Hong Kong business executive with the Apple Daily, a leading Chinese voice for democracy...
...In the midst of his big publicity blitz last month— between an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman on Friday, November 15, and NPR's Morning Edition the following Tuesday—Gore paid a quiet visit to China to deliver the keynote address on China and the Sam Dealey is a member of the Washington Times editorial board...
...What's interesting is that, painful as the fundraising scandals must have been for him (they led to his famous "no controlling legal authority" press conference), Gore didn't seize that "chance for growth...
...Why the stealth...
...In the former vice president's list of painful experiences, the 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising scandals must rank pretty high...
...We are grateful that Vice President Gore took the time to speak to the Asia Society Hong Kong," Holbrooke says in a statement...
...It was the kind of trip about which presidential aspirants love to boast...
...For starters, the event was hosted not by BusinessWeek magazine but by the China Development Institute (CDI), a state-run economic think tank, and a host of other official entities, including the Communist party's Shenzhen Economic Daily...
...What's more, Ronnie Chan served as a board member of Enron from 1996 until the company went belly-up this spring...
...the roster of fellow speakers reads like a Who's Who in the world of international business...
...BY SAM DEALEY "IT'S UNFORTUNATELY TRUE," Al I Gore told the Washington Post Alast month, "that the painful experiences in life give you more of a chance for growth than the others...
...To suggest that Vice President Gore's activities in Hong Kong were somehow improper because he visited China during his trip—as has every president since Richard Nixon—is ridiculous and smacks [of] old-school McCarthyism...
...It would be akin to Gore giving a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations and there being a former Enron executive in attendance...
...The Asia Society is the leading non-profit, nongovernmental organization in the United States concerned with Asia, and we are proud that Ronnie Chan is a Member of the Board and the leader of our activities in Hong Kong...
...WTO at an economic forum in the bustling southern border city of Shenzhen...
Vol. 8 • December 2002 • No. 14
