A trailer park, a billionaire linked to Chinese Communist Party intelligence services, and a U.S. nuclear bomber facility. It would be rejected by Hollywood as too far-fetched for a movie plot, but the story is frighteningly real.
A foreign-owned trailer park in rural Missouri sits directly beside Whiteman Air Force Base, the home of America’s nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber fleet. The Knob Noster Trailer Park lies less than a mile from the runway, separated from the base by only a fence. Business records show the property was acquired in 2017 through a maze of shell companies ultimately controlled by a Canadian couple, Esther Mei and Cheng Hu.
The couple has documented ties to Chinese tycoon Miles Guo, also known as Guo Wengui or Ho Wan Kwok, who has described himself as a former intelligence “affiliate” of the Chinese Communist Party. Guo was convicted in July 2024 on nine federal counts, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering in a billion-dollar fraud scheme.
Guo Wengui rose from a poor village in Shandong to become a flamboyant Beijing real estate tycoon operating in the gray zone between business and the Chinese security state. He functioned as a “white glove,” facilitating deals and protection for powerful officials while amassing wealth through politically connected construction projects. A key relationship was with Ma Jian, the powerful head of Chinese counterintelligence in the Ministry of State Security, with whom Guo later admitted having a long-running partnership as an “affiliate” of the security services.
Ma Jian allegedly used his position to shield Guo’s businesses and crush rivals, including an episode where a vice mayor who blocked one of Guo’s projects was brought down using compromising surveillance footage, clearing the way for Guo’s development. Guo cultivated access to senior Chinese and foreign elites, hosted lavish dinners, maintained a garage full of supercars, and even acted as a cutout to meet the Dalai Lama on behalf of Chinese intelligence.
In 2015, after a high-stakes business dispute and the arrest of Ma Jian, Guo fled China, reportedly leaving just ahead of his own likely detention. He settled first in the UK and then in New York, where he purchased a $67.5 million penthouse in the Sherry-Netherland and quickly became a person of interest to U.S. authorities.
He met repeatedly with the FBI, providing detailed information on the finances and personal lives of Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping’s family, effectively trading intelligence for protection. At the same time, he began reinventing himself as an anti-CCP dissident and built a media and political ecosystem in the United States.
In 2017, Steve Bannon needed new financial backers and found in Guo a wealthy partner who shared an aggressive stance against the Chinese Communist Party. Together they launched ventures such as GTV Media Group and promoted the “New Federal State of China,” a self-styled anti-CCP “government in exile” announced in a choreographed event on a boat in New York Harbor.
Guo’s media outlets promoted conservative content, targeting mainly Chinese expatriates and right-wing circles. He simultaneously pushed branded products, cryptocurrencies, and investment schemes that raised hundreds of millions of dollars until the SEC ruled several offerings illegal and forced large restitution, leading to GTV’s shutdown.
Despite presenting himself as a champion of Chinese freedom, Guo waged aggressive campaigns against long-established Chinese dissidents in the West, mobilizing followers to harass them at their homes and accusing them of being CCP spies using classic Communist rhetoric. At one point he publicly offered to “atone” to Beijing, asking the Chinese leadership to assign him a “clear, targeted task” to prove his patriotism and support for Xi Jinping.
Hellbound and Down 