Dear Members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party:  

On behalf of over 300,000 supporters and activists across the nation, the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) thanks you for your focus on threats our nation faces from the Chinese Communist Party.  In particular, we applaud your recent efforts aimed at uncovering the unsettling trend of American investment dollars going to Chinese military contractors and other companies that have been identified as posing national security risks and acting against the interests of the United States.  

The Select Committee’s efforts to carefully scrutinize how hundreds of billions of American dollars is being invested in those Chinese companies is both warranted and welcome, and your reported inquiries of BlackRock and MSCI offer a good initial step.

While we acknowledge that you remain in the beginning stages of your examination, recent media reports suggest that a full and comprehensive examination of this issue likely warrants a much broader review than the couple of firms subject to the Select Committee’s initial inquiry. 

Specifically, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, “more than 2,000 U.S. mutual and exchange-traded funds – particularly those tracking indexes – have $294 billion invested across Chinese stocks and bonds.”  While not all of that money is invested in Chinese companies triggering greatest concern to the Select Committee, Ignites, a financial services trade media outlet affiliated with the Financial Times, reports, “More than 200 mutual funds and ETFs are invested in Chinese companies flagged as ‘concerning’ last week by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, data shows.”

Ignites also highlighted the companies with the most money invested in flagged Chinese companies:  

“Altogether, 57 asset managers had at least one mutual fund or ETF invested in the companies listed by the select committee as of June 30, according to Morningstar Direct data.  The group includes major firms such as Dimensional Fund Advisors, Fidelity, State Street and Vanguard.”  

Similarly, following the reports of your initial letters to BlackRock and MSCI, Bloomberg heard from experts who stressed the need for greater oversight of the entire financial services industry:  

“BlackRock is one of many asset managers that provide exposure to emerging markets and the Chinese market specifically...  If this is something for Congress to be concerned about, it is not coming from one index provider and one asset manager – it is a broader industrywide event.” —Todd Rosenbluth, Head of Research at ETF data and analytics company VettaFi 

Given that potential exposure across so many firms and funds, we hope to see additional actions by the Select Committee in coming weeks to broaden its efforts to examine this grave issue.  

Thank you very much for your attention to this important matter, and please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments.  

cc: Members of the House Financial Services Committee