President Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Senior Adviser on China in Policy Planning Mira Rapp-Hooper served as fellows at Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center, which has taken millions in Chinese Communist Party cash and counts Chinese government and military-linked individuals as fellows and speakers, The National Pulse can reveal.
Follow The Money.
The center re-established itself in 2016 following a $30,000,000 donation from the son of the late Paul Tsai, Vice Chairman and co-founder of Alibaba Joseph Tsai. Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma, has close financial and personnel ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Joseph Tsai is also a “patron” of the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a Chinese Communist Party-backed grouped exposed by The National Pulse for sponsoring trips to China for journalists and politicians in exchange for “favorable coverage” and part of the country’s United Front efforts “to co-opt and neutralize sources of opposition to the Chinese Communist Party” and encourage “positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”
The Paul Tsai China Center was also singled out in a Department of Education (DOE) letter requesting financial records relating to cash—estimated to be around $375 million—the Ivy League university has taken from foreign governments but failed to report.
The center describes its purpose as “helping advance China’s legal reforms, improving U.S.–China relations, and increasing understanding of China in the United States” and “works collaboratively with a broad range of top experts in the Chinese government, universities, and civil society” to do so.
But in reality, the center collaborates extensively with the Chinese Communist Party and its American enablers.
CCP Apparatchiks.
Among the Yale Center’s visiting fellows and faculty are professors at Chinese Communist Party-run universities, Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks, and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) advisers.
Visiting Fellow Li Qiang doubles as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Beijing Military Law Society, Director of the Military Law Institute at the China University of Political Science and Law, and former member on “expert panel on lawfare for the Chinese PLA Air Force” from 2015 to 2020.
One visiting fellow “advised” Chinese Communist Party officials on drafting “rules regarding civil protection orders” in addition to another fellow serving as the Deputy Director-General of the Office of Senior Advisors to the state-run People’s Bank of China and Secretary-General of the Financial Research Center in the Office of the State Council.
Another served as a former official in the China Food and Drug Administration, describing himself as “heavily involved in the drafting of policies and laws relating to food and drug e-commerce, among other things” and revealing he is a recipient of Chinese government-backed research grants.
Payola.
And the center’s American counterparts have frequently peddled Chinese Communist Party lines in Western media outlets.
Visiting Lecturer and Senior Fellow Jamie Horsley has attempted to absolve the Chinese Communist Party of blame for COVID-19 in a Brookings Institute piece entitled “Let’s end the COVID-19 blame game: Reconsidering China’s role in the pandemic”:
The Chinese party-state did mishandle aspects of the initial outbreak. But based on what we now know about COVID-19’s early and asymptomatic transmission and many countries’ ineffective responses, it is not clear that greater transparency in the first weeks would have prevented its spread overseas. Given both this uncertainty and that COVID-19 is the most devastating global health and economic crisis since World War II, the United States and China should end the blame game over the pandemic, collaborate to conquer it, and lay the groundwork for more effectively handling future outbreaks.
She also downplayed China’s social credit and surveillance systems in a Foreign Policy magazine piece, “China’s Orwellian Social Credit Score Isn’t Real.”
Visiting Lecturer and Senior Fellow Susan Thornton was also one of five academics who penned a letter to the Trump administration insisting that “China is not an enemy.”
The center also runs a speaking program, often hosting professors and deans from Chinese Communist Party-run universities.
Many guest speakers are current and former Chinese Communist Party officials, including Central Commission for Discipline Inspection member Li Shishi, Vice President of China’s Supreme Court Wan Exiang, Vice Minister of the State Council’s Office Wang Yongqing, Counselor for Intellectual Property at the Chinese Embassy Yang Guohua, Ambassador Wu Jianmin, and more.
In addition to hosting people such as Christina Ho, the Country Director for the Clinton Foundation’s China program, the school has also hosted noted members of pro-China lobbying groups such as former Asia Society President Kevin Rudd, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Vice Chair Cheng Li, and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Beijing Biden.
Rapp-Hooper, who has been installed as Biden’s State Department Senior Adviser on China in Policy Planning and at the United Nations, previously served as Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center.
She spoke on two 2019 panels entitled “What Should Be the U.S. Policy Toward China” and “From Engagement to Competition in U.S.-China Relations.”
Sullivan, a Non-resident Senior Fellow, spoke in 2018 on the subject of “Can America Still Lead?”
These unearthed ties follow National Pulse reporting linking Sullivan to Harvard’s Belfer Center, which collaborates with Chinese Communist Party officials on cybersecurity measures and conferences.
