China’s global spending spree

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

China has been on a giant global shopping spree. Since 2000, Chinese state banks have fuelled investments and acquisitions at a surprisingly rate - some four times what was previously thought. Brand new data, shared exclusively with the BBC, reveals that many of Beijing’s state-backed spending has targeted rich countries. Such deals are strictly legal, though not always easy to trace. Observers in the United States, Europe and elsewhere are alarmed at the potential for Beijing to dominate key technologies and turbo charge its technological might. Celia Hatton investigates the sometimes murky ways in which Chinese state money can be traced to sensitive industrial sectors. But she also discovers that shutting out Chinese influence is not easy or desirable.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:09.3	Imagine that you work for CIA,
0:12.3	and you're coming under investigation because of something you did
0:16.9	in the line of duty, but it is now being questioned.
0:24.6	BBC World Service, welcome to the documentary. You say, I better get a lawyer, and there's legal insurance you can buy.
0:31.6	It specializes in government employees and intelligence personnel,
0:36.6	and it was founded by an FBI agent.
0:43.8	Over a long career, veteran U.S. journalist Jeff Stein had heard it all, but in 2016, he uncovered
0:51.3	a story even he could scarcely believe.
1:07.8	Why would you suspect that an insurance company founded by an FBI agent is secretly owned by a Chinese person with close connections to the Chinese Communist Party?
1:13.2	The world of insurance isn't often exciting, but listen to this.
1:19.5	An American company called Right USA caters for top secret U.S. government agents,
1:22.3	and it's privy to all their personal details.
1:29.6	Yet a few years ago, Fosun Group, a major Chinese firm with top-level connections, bought it,
1:33.6	quite legitimately and seemingly without many noticing.
1:38.5	The purchase was legal at the time, but still, it raises the question, what happens to all the agent's personal data?
1:42.8	It was in the open, so to speak, but it's still, because everything's intertwined so
1:47.9	closely in Beijing, you're essentially giving it up to Chinese intelligence.
1:53.1	How did you find out about this story?
1:55.2	A tip. Someone called me up and said, hey, do you know that the insurance company that insures intelligence
2:02.9	personnel is owned by the Chinese? And I said, well, I did not know that. I was astonished.
2:10.9	One person recalled getting a mailer from the parent company talking about the acquisition of
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