HNA is not a state-owned enterprise in the way that China’s banks, airlines, telecommunication companies and other pillars of the economy are. But its political pedigree runs deep.
For more than a decade, HNA’s chairman, Chen Feng, has been a member of the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, a group of more than 2,000 that meets every five years to help determine party leadership.
HNA’s ownership is murky — one major shareholder lists his address as a shabby apartment building in Beijing.
The company has benefited from sizable loans from state-backed lenders and counts the son of a former top political figure as a business partner: In 2008, according to Chinese corporate records, it formed a venture with a firm that was part of a group led by a son of He Guoqiang, who was then the Communist Party’s powerful discipline chief.
