American companies have been criticized in recent years for selling technology to countries that may use it to thwart dissent. Many of these transactions involved China, but in March the story line took a strange twist. A Chinese company took center stage because it’s a major supplier of cameras and surveillance tools to Chinese authorities, and because its video unit, Uniview Technologies Co., was bought in December by a fund run by Bain Capital.
The Bain connection made this especially newsworthy because the private equity firm was founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Uniview is now in his family’s blind trust. All of this was reported by The New York Times, which quoted sources who pointed out that Romney has criticized President Barack Obama for failing to hammer China’s human rights recordeven as Romney stands to make money from a company that’s part of the problem [see "Blind but Not Forgotten," page 18].
