With bums going to the bathroom people's doorways, thieves smashing their car windows before robbing them, and retail establishments growing ever sparser owing to nobody prosecuting thieves, far-left San Francisco has done a bang-up job in chasing out businesses and taxpayers.

Which presents a crisis to them, as these falling sale-tax receipts and this retail vacancy picture have cut sharply into city revenue.

But rather than change their radical policies to make their city more liveable and bring in the taxpayer cash, as has been done in the past, San Francisco's mayor, London Breed, has found an easy way out: By selling out to China.

According to Breitbart News:

Much like when California’s far-left Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) made a politically useful visit to China in October, Chinese state media on Sunday fawned over visiting San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D).

“While Washington is taking a politically motivated hawkish stance on China to reiterate its global hegemony, Breed’s visit may set a good example of how sincere and pragmatic cooperation can take place in China-U.S. relations,” gushed China’s state-run Global Times.

Breed’s first stop was in Hong Kong, where China shocked the world by brutally suppressing the massive 2019 pro-democracy protests and imposing an authoritarian “national security law” that effectively criminalizes all dissent from the Communist Party.

Who needs to make a city liveable when you've got incoming Chinese cash to bail you out?

You can carry on the same old bad policies with the big moneybags with global ambitions from the next continent backfilling the deficit.

We have already seen at least some of this dynamic building, as when Breed ordered her city cleaned up, Potemkin Village-style, for the visit of China's leader, Xin Jinping, restoring it to its customary chaos after the man left. She took lots of flak for that, and rather then clean the city up 24/365 as seemed logical, she just ignored the criticism and went back to business as usual.

Why she isn't courting normal investors, foreign and domestic, but going for this guys, is kind of a red flag.

It's roughly the same dynamic seen in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez turned the country into a socialist hellhole. As locals sought to bail out, nobody was there to buy their properties  because Chavez clearly didn't respect private property or rule of law. There was one exception, though --  FARC Marxist narcoterrorists from the Colombian side of the Venezuelan border. FARC'S terrorists wanted a good spot to launder their cash from the cocaine trade and a safe haven from Colombia's military. They didn't care if Venezuela had no rule of law, because they didn't need rule of law. What they had were guns and political muscle, which served as their working substitute for rule of law, ensuring that their property rights on the property they bought at firesale prices would never go disturbed. I observed this myself in Yaracuy state when I visited in 2005. People were desperate to get out. But the only eager buyers at the time were FARC, which put these people seeking to flee on the horns of a dilemma.

Which brings us back to San Francisco and its failure to restore rule of law there, in its abundant bum and criminal populations. Who do you sell to when you want to flee, but nobody wants to buy your property in a high-tax, high-crime, high-bum-exposure milieu?

The red Chinese of course, who would be delighted to set up a political power base in San Francisco through major property acquisitions, taking advantage of the progressive city's miserable real estate market and its leaders' refusal to improve the city's liveability. What do the Chinese need those things for when strategic advantage is the aim and they see even their own people as dispensible? Anything to have a political power base in a major American city, calling the shots there, and sending its people from its West Coast base into Washington.

Already they have a Chinese citizen on the board that counts San Francisco's election results, so the power base seems to primed to build. They have bought land and conducted questionable lab experiments in San Francisco's outskirts. The American public views them with a jaded eye as America's top adversary in recent polling.

Sound like the Chicoms are going to stop there? A power base, beginning on the socialism-weakened West Coast is the name of the game. The police stations, bought-off politicians, spy balloons, other spying, Fang-Fang honeytraps, legislative lobbying, propaganda education centers, state harassment of Chinese dissidents, the flow of fentanyl, and more, is bound to follow. So much for the sanctuary city thing for the actual dissidents.

And now in waltzes London Breed for her dog and pony show, courtesy of the ChiComs, just like the assorted third world dictators who sell their countries out to Chinese interests from the One Belt, One Road initiative. The Chinese have seen her kind before.

To the dictators' dismay, they often find that Chinese money comes with strings, something the gullible Breed is unlikely to notice, or care much about if she did.

It's always a good idea to follow the money in these junkets, particularly this one, since China is a major human rights violator, an oppressor of freedom-loving Hong Kong, an abuser of the peoples of Tibet and Xinjiang, a major fentanyl shipper, as well as a growing adversary to the U.S. in the Pacific.

In this case, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the trip was financed by civic group called the San Francisco Special Events Committee, a private nonprofit run by a man named Tom Horn, focused on better-the-city civic projects. So far, so good. Horn began as the heir to an oil fortune, later became a supporter of gay-agenda causes, and then at the age of 40, added 'Francophile,' to his activities, and becoming well honored by the French government, and serving as honorary consul to Monaco. One of his fellow board members is wealthy socialite Charlotte Maillard Schultz, who is the widow of the late Secretary of State George Schultz from a late marriage, who is credited with swinging George rather leftward.

While they don't seem to have obvious interests in China, and I found no smoking guns on anything improper as I searched their history, it's interesting that they suddenly got interested in China for this trip. The group's Form 990 financial statement from 2021, the last year of availability, shows that their finances swing wildly from year to year, are 97% privately financed, yet they are not required to say who donated to them to send the mayor on her way. Could it be Chinese money they are fronting for as they arranged this trip? No one from the general public, at least, knows, and it would be good to know that pretty relevant fact as we watch this dog-and-pony show go on.

As for Breed, she's going the full junket on this trip, and there is little doubt she's traveling in style.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Breed’s itinerary for her upcoming trip features meetings with Chinese-based businesses, including an electronics company, CVTE, and the air carriers Air China, Hainan Airlines and Shenzhen Airlines. Breed’s office framed those gatherings as a continuation of her administration’s endeavors to bring more international businesses and tourists to San Francisco as downtown grapples with a record-high office vacancy rate, an exodus of major retailers and sluggish foot traffic.

“The economic benefits of tourists that come here from China has been significant,” Breed said in an interview at her City Hall office Wednesday. “Tourists spend money. They shop downtown. They go to our neighborhoods. They eat in our restaurants. And we want to push for an economic boom.”

Chinese tourism has recently shown signs of rebounding: China last year regained its pre-pandemic status as the leading country for visitor spending in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, according to SF Travel, the city’s tourism bureau.

Twenty years ago, this might have sounded good, but today it sounds just a little different, what with China's obvious bid to grab power all over the world and the feckless messes left in blue cities now there for the Chinese to scarf up.

It sounds like a way out for Breed, but it's more like a roach motel she's entering her city into, easy to get in and very difficult to get out of when the Chinese turn the screws.

As for the rest of us, all we can see is China getting an ever stronger and politically more powerful foothold into the U.S. from this, brought on by blue-city failure and mercenary greed. Other blue cities are likely to follow.

Advantage: China.

Image: Screen shot from NBC Bay Area News YouTube video