ICYMI: Blake Masters Says He’s Avoided Chinese Investments. Untrue. [The Daily Beast]

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The Daily Beast: Blake Masters Says He’s Avoided Chinese Investments. Untrue.

Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters rails against investments in China—except for when he’s involved in investing in China.
By Roger Sollenberger
August 23, 2022

Key Points:

• California tech financier turned Arizona GOP senate candidate Blake Masters often cites his own business record as a model for his hardline anti-China policies, claiming that as an investor he had not raised money for “a single startup” in China, and wanting to “literally ban” Chinese nationals from working for U.S. companies out of national security concerns.

• One problem. It turns out, Masters has participated in multiple funding rounds for a Chinese biomedical startup—including alongside Chinese Communist Party investors.

• He also had business ties to a second, U.S.-based medical company when it was honored by a CCP-backed organization.

• Both relationships came through Thiel Capital, where Masters worked under his mentor and “best friend” Peter Thiel since 2014. This May, Masters boasted about the firm’s anti-China record in an interview with Tucson conservative radio host Garrett Lewis.

• The claim that they haven’t invested in a Chinese startup is false.

• During Masters’ time at Thiel Capital, the firm made a string of three investments in a Chinese pharmaceutical company called Beijing Imunopharm Technology Co., Ltd, aka “Immunochina.”

• Further, the Thiel investment appears to have funded only Chinese projects. An article announcing the Series C round in 2019 said that Immunochina was at the time of the investment still “targeting China’s domestic market,” and had not yet branched out to other countries.

• The lead investor in Immunochina’s fundraising rounds—Chinese-based Legend Capital—was run by members of the CCP.

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