Left-of-center charitable foundations that spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to promote projects that ostensibly have to do with human rights hold massive financial interests in corporations linked to the Chinese Communist Party — an entity that has been accused of widespread human rights abuses.
A Washington Examiner analysis of 2023 tax disclosures filed by six major liberal charities found roughly $11.6 million worth of stock in Chinese state-owned enterprises, firms implicated in the Uyghur genocide, entities linked to the People’s Liberation Army by the Pentagon, and corporations otherwise close to the CCP. The Arcus Foundation, Gill Foundation, California Wellness Foundation, Educational Foundation of America, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Schmidt Family Foundation, the nonprofit groups reviewed, advocate initiatives that they believe advance the rights of racial and sexual minorities — groups independent observers say the Chinese government treats poorly.
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a major grant-making foundation affiliated with the Rockefeller family that focuses on racial and environmental justice, had $2.7 million invested in CCP-linked firms, according to its most recent financial disclosure. The China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation, COSCO Shipping Ports, CNOOC Group, and Tencent, four entities the Department of Defense has designated as “Chinese military companies,” were among Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s holdings.
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The Pentagon must find that a given firm is “directly or indirectly owned” or otherwise controlled by the Chinese military to be designated as a Chinese military company, according to federal law. “Military-civil fusion contributors to the Chinese defense industrial base,” corporations that knowingly collaborate with the CCP to develop military technology or serve as defense contractors, are also included under the designation.
CNOOC Group, in addition to its military ties, has been accused of aiding the Chinese government in persecuting religious minorities by sending them to “brainwashing centers” as well as perpetuating human rights abuses in Myanmar and Uganda. It has also been implicated in a number of major oil spills, conflicting with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s commitment to ecology.
The Arcus Foundation, California Wellness Foundation, Educational Foundation of America, Gill Foundation, and the Schmidt Family Foundation collectively held millions of dollars worth of stock in Chinese military companies. The Washington Examiner previously reported that the Gates Foundation holds nearly $60 million in equity across three different Chinese military companies, according to its latest tax forms.
“Americans have increasingly lost trust in once-respected institutions, and the charitable sector has not been spared the new skepticism, in part because of this kind of inconsistency,” Capital Research Center communications director Sarah Lee told the Washington Examiner. “The Educational Foundation of America, for example, is a group that insists on selectively investing in corporations based on ESG criteria, refusing to invest if these criteria aren’t met. But they apparently don’t mind holding stock in Tencent, a company reportedly helping censor and surveil Chinese citizens. Their website is packed with images of free men and women of every ethnicity engaged in protests over equity and democracy but one wonders if the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, toiling away under forced labor mandates and facing harsh punishment for ‘resistance,’ could ever be featured on their site.”
Liberal endowments are linked to more than just the Chinese military.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Gill Foundation, which specializes in promoting LGBT rights, both had small shares in Daqo New Energy, a solar company that appears on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of entities “that mine, produce, or manufacture wholly or in part any goods, wares, articles and merchandise with forced labor” from Uyghurs, an ethnic minority group residing in western China that the United States has accused China of perpetuating genocide against. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund was previously invested in GCL-Poly, another Chinese firm reportedly tied to the repression of Uyghurs.
The Gill Foundation told the Washington Examiner that it divested from Daqo in 2024 and explained that the stock ended up in its endowment through its inclusion in an index fund, noting that the charity did not select it specifically.
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The Arcus Foundation, like the Gill Foundation, focuses on advancing gay rights. Both had considerable investments in Chinese state-owned and state-backed businesses. The Chinese state has a very restrictive approach to LGBT policy. Anti-gay discrimination is legal, and the state censors LGBT content.
The Schmidt Family Foundation, Educational Foundation of America, California Wellness Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund all, to some degree, fund programs to advance racial equality in the United States while holding stocks linked to a government that represses ethnic minorities, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, while holding large reserves of Chinese stock, spends millions of dollars every year supporting organizations that are either part of the Chinese government, led by members of the CCP, or engaged in partnerships with China. Many environmentalist charities in the U.S. take millions of dollars per year from CCP-tied organizations and, in turn, send money overseas to provide the Chinese government with ostensibly Western support.
The state-owned Bank of China and its subsidiaries are among the most commonly held Chinese stocks in these charitable endowments. In addition to being owned by the CCP, the bank also faced criticism in 2012 after it allegedly transferred money to Hamas. Corporations that assist the Chinese government in achieving its policy goals, such as Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, and BYD, as well as state-owned industrial and mineral corporations, were also common.
Not all charities are as forthcoming when it comes to sharing the composition of their endowments. The Ford Foundation, for instance, has a history of using its nearly $17 billion in assets to aid the Chinese government in achieving its foreign and domestic agendas. In 2023, the charity spent roughly $10 million assisting China in carrying out its Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure project some experts say China uses to exert influence on developing nations.
While one may wonder whether the Ford Foundation has substantial Chinese holdings in its endowment, the charity’s tax filings do not name specific holdings but simply disclose $294.6 million in “publicly traded securities.”
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The Washington Examiner’s analysis only covered a small section of American philanthropy. Keyword searches of public databases reveal that charities across the country, political and nonpolitical, use stock issued by CCP-linked and Chinese state-run entities to fill their endowments.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, California Wellness Foundation, Educational Foundation of America, the Arcus Foundation, and the Schmidt Family Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.