Flashy Chinese billionaire buys three BC malls

garretschoenbergOctober 11, 2022

Opinion: Weihong Liu bought a third giant BC mall — Tsawassen First Nation. The businessman who once punched a reporter has been described as “a bit of a juggernaut.”

Tsawassen Mills was purchased by Chinese billionaire Liu Weihong, who has close ties to the Beijing government. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

Chinese billionaire Liu Weihong plans to buy BC’s third mega-mall and turn some of her retail facilities into marketplace homes.

The flamboyant businesswoman, whose employees describe her as gregarious and “a bit of a juggernaut,” is a member of several Beijing-linked organizations that China experts say operate as part of the Chinese Communist Party. is.

This year, Liu bought the struggling Tsawassen Mills mall, which has more than 200 stores and is valued at $412 million. The mall was built five years before him on former farmland owned by the Tsawwassen Indigenous people who gained self-government 12 years ago.

In the last two years, Liu has purchased the city’s largest, the Mayfair shopping center in Victoria (valued at $242 million) and the Woodgrove Center in Nanaimo (valued at $260 million). In 2019, through her company Central Walk, she purchased the Arbutus Ridge Golf Club in Cobble Hill just north of Victoria.

Ryu has a colorful past. In 2012, the Global Times, widely regarded as the propaganda arm of the Communist Party of China, said Liu, a “female political adviser” in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province and a real estate company executive, “beaten a female reporter” in the news. said. meeting. Liu had accused reporters of writing false reports that her company was involved in allegedly illegal apartment sales.

According to the Central Walks website, Liu is the company’s “Chairman of the Board,” and until 2014 the company owned about 1.4 million square feet of shopping centers in Shenzhen, a city of 13 million people north of Hong Kong. was She sold the mall and moved her business to Canada.

According to Liu’s company bio, she has a “very fondness for hands-on business”, has an “unquenchable passion” for commercial real estate, and is credited with being “a pioneer in green sustainability.” person” is included.

The Central Walks website also advertises that Ms. Liu is a member or director of many Beijing-affiliated organizations, including the Conference of the Ministry of Political Advisory, the Guangdong Overseas Friendship Association, the China Chamber of Women Entrepreneurs, and the All-China Federation of Industries. increase. commercial.

George Washington University professor Bruce Dixon, in his book The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century, wrote that China’s communist rulers “closely controlled” such large-scale institutions. It says it does.

Such groups operate in countries other than China to “reduce the Chinese government’s visibility in the project and provide a buffer against public resistance to Chinese influence,” Dixon says. .

Such organizations created by the Chinese Communist Party “lack the autonomy expected of civil society organizations,” Dixon writes. “These mass organizations are often simply described as ‘transmission belts’ that convey party views to these groups.”

Hefe Fang Sun, managing director of Central Walk, responded to Postmedia’s request for an interview with Liu by email on Thursday. She refused to answer a series of questions, including whether she had ties to the Chinese Communist Party, whether she justified attacking reporters, and whether she had a particular place of residence.

U.S. security officials have described China’s “political advisory” and other organizations as weapons of the United Front System aimed at extending China’s political interests around the world, and its using organizations such as the CCP to obscure the powers the CCP exercises through them.

Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat for China who specializes in Canada-China relations at the Macdonald Laurier Institute, said Liu’s membership and board of directors of the Canton Overseas Friendship Association and similar organizations is He said it was a sign that Mr. Liu had good connections.

Such memberships are “very popular. They offer Chinese businessmen great prestige and some degree of political protection.” According to Barton, a Global Times article describing Liu’s assault The spirit of the party reflects how the party is trying to protect her.

Burton was intrigued by Liu’s firm’s desire to develop market housing, including residential towers, on the BC Mall site it now owns.

Emphasizing that he doesn’t know Central Walk’s motives, Burton said many wealthy Chinese would like to own property outside of China.

“In China[when people face legal charges]everything is seized,” Burton said. “But that’s not the case in Canada. Having real estate abroad allows some people from China to escape ruin.”

Last year, Central Walk’s head of development Valen Tam told Carla Wilson, a Settlers reporter for the Victoria Times, that Liu was a permanent resident of Canada, meaning she wouldn’t have to give up her passport from China. (Dual nationality is not allowed). .

Liu’s company at one point owned Victoria’s Fairmont Empress Hotel, which was sold to Vancouver developer Nat Bosa in 2014. Tam said last year that Vancouver Island was “the hub and what we hold dearest” to Central Walk, but Liu admitted that’s not the case. She has a specific residence in her home, Vancouver Island. Her agent says she lives in different places at different times.

dtodd@postmedia.com

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