Deal for Balboa Bay Club collapses

Unlike major Western countries, China controls the outward flow of cash as well as money coming into the country.

"China is still becoming comfortable with its own evolution regarding capital flow and investments," Brickman said.

The setbacks are bad news for Brad Williams, chief executive of MVP RV Inc., the Riverside maker of motor homes and trailers.

Williams said that about $30 million from a Chinese investment group that included Chung rescued his idled company in 2010. Among other things, the backing enabled MVP to buy a 24-acre Riverside manufacturing complex from bankrupt RV giant Fleetwood Enterprises.

But an additional $310 million in funding that Chung had pledged to jump-start production appears to be in jeopardy. At the very least, it won't flow until Chinese authorities approve the design of the tour buses and campers that MVP hoped to sell in China.

Williams, who had talked of generating 1,200 jobs in the economically battered Inland Empire — a deal the White House praised as an emblem of U.S.-China cooperation — expressed frustrations in an interview last year.

"I'm dying to start hiring and I can't," he said.