Mitt ‘Richie Rich’ has business ties with Chinese

As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney.

The same man who wants to be your next president still has his fortunes tied to Bain. Bain and China are business partners.

Shortly after arriving in Puerto Rico to campaign before Sunday’s primary, Mitt Romney said he was unaware of his former firm’s ties to a company that is reportedly providing technology services to a Chinese government surveillance program.

In December, a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques and movie theaters from centralized command posts.

The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police officials in different jurisdictions to share images in real time through the Internet. Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet that “provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s Web site. (Yea right)

Human rights advocates say in China they are also used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents. “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear,” said Loksag, a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gansu Province. He said the cameras helped the authorities identify and detain nearly 200 monks who participated in a protest at his monastery in 2008.

I can just imagine how tough Mitt Romney would be with the Chinese after he’s elected president. He’s been licking their boots for business deals for decades.

The more you know about Mitt…the worse it is. The final irony: the GOP looks at him as their “inevitable (not best) nomination to go against President Obama.