Born in Taiwan, Johnny Chung went from being the owner of a "blastfaxing" business (an automated system that quickly sends out faxes to thousands of businesses) in California to being in the middle of the Washington, D.C. elite within a couple weeks of his first donations to the Democratic Party. Called a "hustler" by a U.S. National Security Council (NSC) aide, Chung made forty-nine separate visits to the White House between February 1994 and February 1996. One of his purposes in making these trips was to obtain photographs of himself with the Clintons, which he believed would help him to get business in China by giving people the impression that he had connections and influence in Washington—he used a brochure that included at least ten photographs of himself with Hillary Clinton along with a personal note from her. During one of the U.S. Commerce Department trade missions to China, Chung befriended former Chinese Lt. Col. Liu Chaoying, then an executive at China Aerospace International Holdings (中國航天國際控股有限公司), which is the Hong Kong-based subsidiary of the government-controlled CASC (中國航天科技集團公司), China's premier satellite launching company. She is the daughter of former General Liu Huaqing.