WASHINGTON — In Miami, a luxury condo tower called One Thousand Museum, is rising over Biscayne Bay. Its contractor is a Chinese firm, the largest builder in the world.
In the tiny North Carolina town of Tar Heel, the Smithfield Foods Packing Co., the world's biggest slaughterhouse that often smells of pig manure, belongs to a giant Chinese meat-processing company.
Hundreds of movie theaters across the country are owned by the Kansas City-based AMC Theatres chain, which reports to China's richest man.
In a presidential campaign focused on the loss of American jobs, a recent study shows how U.S. jobs are created or preserved under China's investment boom in the United States.
China has spent more than $100 billion since 2000, buying or making significant investments in 1,900 companies. The inflow is accelerating: In the first quarter of this year, Chinese firms had $30 billion in pending or completed deals, according to Stephen Orlins, head of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a New York-based organization that researches the two countries' ties.
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The Chinese purchasers, many of them state-owned or with close government ties in Beijing, are responsible for almost 100,000 American jobs, according to a recent report by Orlins' organization and the Rhodium Group, a New York company that provides research on global business trends to U.S. and foreign firms.
One of those jobs is held by Brad Meltzer, president of Plaza Construction Florida, which is building One Thousand Museum, set to open by next spring with a $49 million penthouse and condos starting at $5.7 million.
The Miami-based company's parent group, Plaza Construction, is headquartered in New York. It's owned by China Construction America of Jersey City, N.J., a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corp. in Beijing.
"That investment has offered us dynamic growth opportunities, greater financial strength, increased bonding capabilities, which is critical to our business, and global procurement opportunities for our clients," Meltzer told McClatchy.
As she watches the tower rise on the western edge of Museum Park, 14 miles south of her Miami Gardens home, Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson is advocating for a Chinatown in the heart of her congressional district.
"The Miami-Dade Convention & Visitors Bureau is in discussions with Chinese investors and working on direct flights from China to Miami," Wilson said. "That will bring tourism and other kinds of economic investment to the area, which would benefit South Florida."
Statewide, given its relative wealth and large population, the Chinese stake in Florida has been moderate. Since 2000, Chinese companies have invested $1.1 billion to buy or significantly support 52 business establishments with 630 workers.
More than half of that investment came last year in a single purchase: The Dalian Wanda Group, also the buyer of AMC Theatres, paid $650 million for Tampa-based World Triathlon Corp., which runs some 270 Ironman Triathlons around the world each year.
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That purchase signals a likely increased "Chinese footprint" in Florida's tourism, real estate and agricultural sectors in the coming years, the report said.
Most purchases of American firms by Chinese or other foreign companies draw little, if any, attention from the U.S. government. But a small number raise such high national security concerns, they are vetted by a secretive multi-agency committee of six Cabinet secretaries and the U.S. attorney general.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), set up by President Gerald Ford in 1975 to safeguard the country, in recent years has focused increasingly on Chinese acquisitions.
Among the most high-profile deals, CFIUS in 2013 approved the Chinese purchase of Smithfield Foods, which has operations in 26 states and supplies ham and other pork products to the U.S. military.
Last year, it allowed the sale of the New York's fabled Waldorf Astoria hotel, home to visiting American presidents and foreign dignitaries, to Anbang, one of China's largest insurance companies.
However, CFIUS in 2012 rejected a Chinese firm's purchase of an Oregon wind-farm complex because of its proximity to a major Navy training base. President Barack Obama upheld the decision after the Chinese company objected.
In February, 46 House Republicans led by Rep. Robert Pittenger of North Carolina wrote a letter asking CFIUS to conduct a "full and rigorous" review of the pending purchase of the Chicago Stock Exchange by Chongqing Casin Enterprise Group, a large Chinese real estate and infrastructure investment company. CFIUS is also expected to vet a $5.4 billion bid by Haier Group, which Scientific American named last year as one of China's most innovative companies, to buy the appliance-division of General Electric.
"As China becomes more and more invested in the United States, it has a bigger and bigger stake in the success of the American economy, so that creates a shared interest," said Chris Brewster, a Washington lawyer with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who represents Chinese and other firms seeking to buy American companies. "At the same time, plainly these investments can present national security considerations for the United States."
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Chinese acquisitions now make up more than one-fifth of all foreign purchases or significant investments vetted by CFIUS. In 2013 and 2014, China moved ahead of all other countries for the first time, according to the committee's required annual reports to Congress.
CFIUS currently is reviewing the pending purchase by China National Chemical Corp. of Syngenta. Although that's a Swiss company, it has several key affiliates in the United States, starting with Syngenta Biotechnology Inc. in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Because Syngenta is among the world's biggest seed and pesticide companies, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and other senators recently demanded that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack participate in the national security review of its purchase by ChinaChem.
The agriculture chief is not by statute a CFIUS member, but Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who chairs the panel, accepted the senators' demand earlier this month.
"China's proposed takeover of Syngenta is a serious issue impacting America's food supply, and thus our national security as well as our public health," Rubio said.
