A foundation linked to a former Shanghai police official with Chinese Communist Party intelligence and influence ties bought the Securities Building, a century-old office about 650 feet northeast of the White House, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.
District of Columbia property filings show the Philip Qiu and Family Foundation paid $8.4 million for the building at 729 15th Street NW on July 21.
The foundation’s namesake, Philip Qiu, also known by his Chinese name Qiu Feili, has held at least four positions within China’s intelligence and state security services, according to university records and translated Chinese government announcements.
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He began his career as a detective in the Criminal Investigation Team of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, a local arm of China’s Ministry of Public Security. By October 2011, while enrolled in a master’s program at Shanghai Jiaotong University, he had undergone special forces training. A university announcement credited him with commanding his unit during a team-building wargame exercise and posting the group’s best individual marksmanship score.
A Shanghai native, Qiu has also held at least three roles within the arms of the United Front Work Department, a CCP body the House Select Committee on the CCP has described as blending “engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations.”
He has served on the executive committee of the Shanghai branch of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, joining its Shanghai Overseas Chinese Foundation as a director in May 2017 and chairing it since May 2021. That foundation’s secretary general has separately served as a director of the Shanghai International Culture Association, which Alex Joske, a former analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has identified as a front for China’s Ministry of State Security.
The Philip Qiu and Family Foundation is headquartered in a separate historic property about half a mile north of the White House that it shares with six other Qiu-controlled entities, including the Chinese American Museum in Washington, DC. He co-founded the museum in 2017 with Chen Xiaoping, a former chairman of the Shanghai Overseas Chinese Foundation who has also held posts with the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
The museum says on its website that no foreign government funds, controls, or influences it, though Chinese government entities have co-sponsored at least eight of its programs. Four of those involved UFWD-linked religious groups. Since 2023, the museum has co-sponsored three Buddhist events with a Shanghai temple the United Front Work Department’s religious affairs committee oversees, including one it hosted at the Library of Congress.
National security analysts said the purchase raises the risk of surveillance against the White House complex. Bryan Dean Wright, a former CIA operations officer, said the building could support communications interception, calling it a property “where the next 9/11 will come from.”
Author and China analyst Gordon Chang said no Chinese citizen should be able to own real estate with a sightline into a sensitive federal installation, adding “no ifs, ands, or buts.”
Michael Lucci, founder and chief executive of the advocacy group State Armor, called the risk “screamingly obvious” and urged federal authorities to force a sale and ban future purchases.
Neither the White House nor federal law enforcement agencies had publicly responded to the purchase as of publication, and no agency had announced a formal investigation.
