Port of Los Angeles security under control of Chinese President’s son

The Port of Los Angeles--the nation’s largest--has purchased with $1.7 million American tax dollars via a “port security grant” awarded by the U.S. Department of Homeland security, a mobile X-ray scanning system made by Nuctech Company Limited, owned outright by Hu Haifeng, the son of Chinese President Hu Jintao.


Critics of the transaction raise the specter of sensitive X-ray images and cargo manifests being archived on the X-ray scanning system and transmitted via the Internet back to Nuctech in China, or to the Chinese government. Indeed, the mobile system was required to offer that technical capability from the get-go.

“The bid that included the Nuctech scanner, which was cheaper than rival bids submitted by Smiths Detection in New Jersey, and Rapiscan Systems, of Torrance, CA, was formally submitted to the port by a small U.S.-based business headquartered in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, known as DULY Research Inc.” “We were cognizant of the fact that we were the first port to acquire this Chinese system,” said George Cummings, the port’s director of homeland security. “They were the low bidder and they complied with all the technical requirements.”

It’s been two years since the Dubai Ports fiasco was last on the public radar screen. During the high profile Dubai Ports debacle, those who opposed the sale of American ports to Dubai, vowed that no foreign government would be permitted to acquire such strategic targets in future.

The Port of Los Angeles is not only one of them, it’s the biggest of the lot.

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