An American company turns to China for funding help...the times have certainly changed

Chinese Target U.S. Homes
State Bank in Talks to Provide Lennar $1.7 Billion for Two Long-Stalled Projects
Wallstreet Journal
June 25, 2012

Lennar Corp., (LEN)one of the U.S.'s largest home builders, is in talks with the China Development Bank for approximately $1.7 billion in capital to jump-start two long-delayed San Francisco projects that would transform two former naval bases into large-scale housing developments, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A rendering of the Treasure Island project.

The City of San Francisco

The negotiations aren't final and the financing arrangement could still fall through. But if completed, the deal would reflect a changing dynamic between the U.S. and Chinese economies, as an American company turns to China for help funding a long-delayed and partially publicly funded project that otherwise wouldn't get done.

The developments, Treasure Island and Hunters Point Shipyard, also have the potential to alter San Francisco's housing market by providing nearly 20,000 new homes, a sports arena and millions of square feet of office and retail space in a market that is land-constrained and has had limited new construction. The city has committed hundreds of millions of dollars, in the form of tax-increment bonds, to the projects, which in total are expected to cost $10.5 billion over the next few decades.

In recent years, Chinese state money—in large part provided by CDB and its counterpart the Export-Import Bank of China—has been pivotal in funding major infrastructure and resource projects around the world, but the bulk of that activity has been in developing countries in Africa, South America and Asia...

(click here to read the full article)

The U.S. allows China to buy the AMC Theater chain but blames China for a "Communist takeover?" Really...where`s the duplicity in that?

Photo credit: Infowars

Chinese company Wanda has announced it will buy AMC, the second-largest theater chain in the USA, increasing fears that the Chinese Communist Party is expanding its influence globally as part of a media takeover.

“Beijing is investing heavily in projecting its “soft power,” or cultural influence, by boosting Chinese state media’s presence abroad, including the USA, where the Chinese government has also run advertisements in New York’s Times Square,” reports USA Today.

Wanda’s acquisition of AMC increases concerns that Chinese-style censorship of politically controversial movies may become commonplace in the United States.

“We have no plan whatsoever to promote Chinese movies in the U.S. market,” said Wang Jianlin, Chairman and President of Wanda.

Billionaire Jianlin, the 15th richest person in China according to Forbes, is also a “Communist Party member, who sits on the nation’s top advisory council.”

However, box office money from the Chinese market is already influencing movie industry titans in America to tone down negative portrayals of China itself.

During the 2009 production of Red Dawn, a re-make of the 1984 classic which featured Soviet troops invading America, producers changed the identity of the villains after initially having agreed to portray the bad guys as Chinese troops.

When distributors became nervous about the film harming profits from Chinese movie-goers, MGM decided to ditch Chinese soldiers in favor of North Korean invaders.

“As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from “Red Dawn,” substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake,”reported the L.A. Times.

Despite being in the can for years, the movie has been delayed and will only be released at the end of this year – absent the Chinese troops.

“Around the time MGM first delayed the release of Red Dawn, a Chinese newspaper called the Global Times expressed concerns that the film would demonize their state and its citizens (thanks in part to certain leaked images from the set). Evidently, this may have been a factor in scaring off potential distributors who were apprehensive about what effect their involvement with the film would have on future dealings with China,” writes Chris Schrader.

Undue Chinese Communist Party influence on the U.S. movie industry and the media in general is just one of numerous sectors where concern is growing about the authoritarian country’s projection of its “soft power.”

In 2010, China launched CNC, a global news channel run by Xinhua, the state news agency. The launch was seen as a test of “Beijing’s ability to adjust its propaganda machine.”

The Obama administration recently gave Beijing the green light to buy up U.S. oil and gas deposits worth billions of dollars, with the companies involved mostly or wholly owned by the ruling Communist Party.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.