Chinese Government Paid Bill Clinton Lucrative Speaking Fee as Sec. State Hillary Made ‘Asia Pivot’

Former President Bill Clinton bagged a $200,000 speaking fee on October 21, 2011, paid for by Chinese government entities just ten days after then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton heralded a “pivot to Asia” in U.S. policy. 

The stunning revelation is just one of many in the new book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. 

Correspondence between Bill Clinton’s office and Hillary Clinton’s State Department reveals that among the $200,000 speech’s cosponsors were a coalition of Chinese government entities and organizations, including one “launched and chaired by an official from the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry” known as the China Electronic Commerce Association, reports Clinton Cash. Clinton’s speech took place at the innocuously-named Silicon Valley Information Business Alliance in Santa Clara, California. 

Bill Clinton also hauled in $550,000 for a Shanghai appearance underwritten by Chinese billionaire and outspoken Chinese nationalist Yan Jiehe. Known as “China’s baddest billionaire builder,” Clinton Cash reports that Yan is “perhaps most famous in China for lopping off and flattening seven hundred mountaintops for a construction project.” The Chinese billionaire calls Bill Clinton a “close friend.” 

Whether the Clintons made it clear to the Obama administration that Bill Clinton’s $200,000 would be underwritten by the Chinese government as Hillary Clinton touted a “pivot to Asia” in U.S. policy is presently unclear. 

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced it “will not review the breaches of the 2008 ethics agreement Hillary Clinton signed in order to become secretary of state after her family’s charities admitted in March that they had not complied,” reports Reuters.