The identities were buried.
Foreign-agent filings reveal that operatives working for a Chinese Communist Party-linked influence organization planned free trips for American journalists based on the potential for “favorable coverage” and sought to “effectively disseminate positive messages” about Beijing.
But the filings did not plainly identify the reporters who received the access.
By cross-referencing the filings with archived newsletters, annual reports and contemporaneous accounts, this investigation has uncovered the names of prominent American journalists who participated in China trips organized or funded by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, or CUSEF.
The roster includes current and former journalists from The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, NPR, the Associated Press, Vox, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other major American news organizations.
In several cases, the trips were followed by columns and reports defending Chinese government policies, attacking President Trump’s confrontation with Beijing or presenting the decline of American manufacturing as unavoidable.
CUSEF was founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a former vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a central component of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front system.
A bipartisan congressional report explains that the United Front seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority” of the CCP. Its targets include foreign governments, universities, businesses, media organizations and other institutions capable of shaping public opinion.
CUSEF’s own foreign-agent records reveal how that strategy was applied to the American press.
Washington lobbyists and public-relations firms working for the organization described plans to recruit influential journalists, generate “favorable coverage” and “effectively disseminate positive messages to the media, key influencers and opinion leaders, and the general public” regarding China.
American journalists tour facilities including Chinese military bases.
The identities of the journalists were not presented together in the filings. They emerge only after matching those records with CUSEF’s own publications and accounts from the trips.The Names
Records identify the following journalists as participants in CUSEF-sponsored delegations, funded trips or related media exchange programs:
- Ezra Klein, Vox co-founder and New York Times columnist;
- Matthew Yglesias, Vox co-founder;
- Ronald Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and Atlantic senior editor;
- Bradford Plumer, New York Times reporter;
- Marjorie Miller, former Associated Press vice president and editor;
- Steve Clemons, former editor-at-large of The Hill;
- David Rohde, former New Yorker editor and current MS NOW national security reporter;
- Jonathan Alter, MSNBC commentator;
- David Sweeney, former NPR managing editor;
- Daniel Gross, former Yahoo Finance columnist;
- Marilyn Geewax, former NPR senior editor;
- Kathleen Deveny, former Newsweek and Wall Street Journal Marketplace editor;
- Tom Omestad, former U.S. News & World Report correspondent;
- Steve Chapman, former Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial writer;
- Bruce Stokes, former National Journal correspondent;
- Craig Gilbert, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief;
- Tony Semerad, Salt Lake Tribune reporter;
- Shikha Dalmia, former columnist for The Week;
- Jonathan Broder, former Newsweek senior writer;
- Cristi Kempf, former Chicago Tribune associate managing editor;
- Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor; and
- Julian Pecquet, former Foreign Affairs reporter.
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell also disclosed that CUSEF funded one of her China trips, writing at the bottom of two columns:
“Disclosure: My trip is being paid for by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a Hong Kong-based nonprofit that aims to improve Americans’ understanding of China.”
The disclosure acknowledged who paid for the travel. It did not tell readers that the organization’s foreign-agent representatives had discussed journalist trips in terms of favorable coverage and disseminating positive messages about Beijing.
The Coverage That Followed
Trip participant Shikha Dalmia published an op-ed titled “China Bashing is for Losers” during the same year she traveled to China.
Bradford Plumer later praised Beijing’s climate agenda in a piece titled “China’s ambitious plan to limit carbon emissions, explained.”
Bruce Stokes warned that economic “decoupling” from China would “backfire.”
Catherine Rampell repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s China policies, including in a column titled “Team Trump should be careful what it wishes for on China.”
One of Rampell’s dispatches from her CUSEF-funded trip amplified complaints from Chinese officials who portrayed the United States as the aggressor attempting to contain China’s rise. The column repeated Beijing’s objections to American scrutiny of Huawei, criticism of currency manipulation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership before urging Washington to defuse the “zero-sum-game attitude” between the two countries.
David Rohde produced one of the starkest examples.
After participating in a CUSEF-organized trip, Rohde praised the role of the Chinese state in building and expanding businesses:
“Unlike the United States where free-market advocates deride the role of government, the Chinese state has played a central role in creating, supporting and expanding businesses here.”
He also defended the economic opportunities created by Beijing’s system:
“Those successes show that, for all the attacks from American politicians on Chinese currency manipulation, American companies can find profits in China.”
Rohde then argued that Americans should accept the permanent disappearance of large-scale domestic industry:
“Americans, meanwhile, should accept that large-scale manufacturing will never return to the United States.”
He concluded that American companies should profit from China’s rise while dismissing political objections in Washington as “ideological babble.”
Ezra Klein defended aspects of China’s response to COVID-19, writing on X:
“I keep hearing that China bought us some real time and our government wasted it doing nothing and downplaying the threat.”
Matthew Yglesias joked about helping Communist Party propagandists improve their messaging, writing that he wanted to “give Party flunkies notes” on how to better craft “propaganda.”
He separately quipped:
“Moody’s, S&P, and the People’s Bank of China should just run the government.”
At the time of his trip, Yglesias was affiliated with the Center for American Progress, whose alumni later filled numerous positions in the Biden administration.
Steve Chapman repeatedly attacked President Trump’s trade policies toward China, tweeting:
“China may have a bad human rights record, but you don’t have to take off your shoes for airport security.”
He also authored a now-deleted column making “the case for buying U.S. Olympic outfits from China.”
Ronald Brownstein opposed President Trump’s trade confrontation with Beijing and later attacked criticism of China’s handling of COVID-19.
Former NPR editor Marilyn Geewax went on to serve as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Xi Jinping’s alma mater and one of China’s most politically connected academic institutions.
All Roads Lead to Biden
The CUSEF network also intersected repeatedly with the political apparatus surrounding Joe Biden.
Bruce Stokes is the husband of Wendy Sherman, who became Biden’s deputy secretary of state and one of the administration’s most senior foreign-policy officials.
Steve Clemons enjoyed an especially warm relationship with Biden during the then-vice president’s 2013 trip to China.
Biden publicly introduced Clemons to Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao as:
“A very important man.”
Biden then encouraged the Chinese official to speak with Clemons, declaring:
“He’s the one you really want to speak to.”
Later that day, while accompanied by Hunter Biden, the vice president jokingly attempted to buy Clemons an ice cream bar.
Clemons has since authored commentary arguing that “Biden gets China” and wrote approvingly about the emergence of “a new global order” with China serving as its “anchor.”
This Is What Foreign Influence Looks Like
The scandal is not simply that American journalists traveled to China.
It is that a CCP-linked organization quietly selected and cultivated influential members of the American press while its registered foreign agents discussed opportunities for “favorable coverage” and the dissemination of “positive messages.”
The public was shown the resulting articles.
It was not shown the influence operation behind them.
Beijing did not need to purchase an American newspaper or dictate every sentence. It could pay for access, curate the itinerary, arrange meetings with officials and allow trusted American voices to deliver the preferred conclusions.
From Natalie Winter’s column on Substack:
For more than a decade, former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, combatant commanders, Cabinet officials and members of Congress participated in a military dialogue organized with a Chinese group identified by congressional investigators as a front engaged in “intelligence collection” and “propaganda and perception management.” Some ended up on China’s payroll shortly after.
The Chinese Communist Party did not need to penetrate the Pentagon to gain access to America’s military leadership.
It built a private network around it.
For more than a decade, some of the most powerful retired officers in the United States participated in closed-door meetings with senior Chinese military leaders. The discussions covered Taiwan, the South China Sea, missile defense, cybersecurity and the future of relations between the two militaries.
The American participants included:
- Gen. Peter Pace, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Adm. William “Bill” Owens, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of U.S. Central Command
- Gen. Raymond Odierno, former Army Chief of Staff
- Adm. Jonathan Greenert, former Chief of Naval Operations
- Adm. Timothy Keating, former commander of U.S. Pacific Command
- Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Air Force Chief of Staff
- Gen. Dennis Reimer, former Army Chief of Staff
- Adm. Joseph Prueher, former commander of U.S. Pacific Command
- Gen. John Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
- Gen. Walter Sharp, former commander of U.S. Forces Korea
- Gen. Charles Jacoby, former commander of U.S. Northern Command
- Gen. Charles Wilhelm, former commander of U.S. Southern Command
The program was called the Sanya Initiative.
Its glossy brochures framed it as a peaceful exchange between retired American and Chinese generals. Photographs showed senior officers chatting in Hawaiian shirts, touring military institutions and sitting across from Chinese commanders in ornate meeting rooms.
But the initiative was not organized with an ordinary veterans’ association.
It was funded by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, or CUSEF, and conducted with the China Association for International Friendly Contact, or CAIFC.
Congressional investigators have described CAIFC as “a front organization” for the People’s Liberation Army’s former General Political Department.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission found that the group performed the dual roles of “intelligence collection” and “conducting propaganda and perception management campaigns.”
The commission specifically cited CAIFC’s work through the Sanya Initiative.
Put simply — America’s most senior former military leaders spent years collaborating through a program organized with a Chinese military front that U.S. government investigators linked to intelligence gathering and foreign influence operations.
The CCP’s Influence Architecture
CUSEF supplied the funding and institutional cover.
The foundation was created by Tung Chee-hwa, a former chief executive of Hong Kong who later served as vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
The CPPCC is a central part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front system.
U.S. government reports describe the United Front as an influence apparatus designed to build relationships with foreign elites, suppress opposition to Beijing and induce influential outsiders to advance Chinese Communist Party objectives.
One congressional report described its mission as seeking to:
“Co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition.”
CUSEF heavily relies on the foreign influence tactic of “pay-for-play” trips, including paying and subsidizing journalists to travel to China in exchange for “favorable coverage.”
From Retired Generals To The State Department
The first Sanya Initiative gathering took place in China in 2008.
CUSEF’s annual report named the original American delegation:
- Bill Owens
- Ronald Fogleman
- Dennis Reimer
- Joseph Prueher
- Charles Wilhelm
- John Keane
Their Chinese counterparts included former senior PLA commanders such as Xiong Guangkai, Li Qianyuan, Yu Zhenwu, Pei Huailiang, Zhao Guojun and Zhu Wenquan.
The following year, the initiative moved beyond meetings among retired officers.
CUSEF brought the combined American and Chinese delegations through Hawaii, Washington, D.C., and New York.
According to the foundation’s own brochure, they met:
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen
- Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell
- Rep. Rick Larsen
- Rep. Mark Kirk
- Adm. Timothy Keating
- Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle
CUSEF published a photograph of the Chinese and American generals meeting Clinton in Washington.
X thread: https://x.com/nataliegwinters/thread/2084651322230345905
That is the definition of treason.
While the media, U.S. politicians, military generals, and CEOs are treating Beijing like a business partner, the Chinese have engaged in cyber attacks, spying, economic espionage, and actual threatening of U.S. Naval vessels. Yet these traitors think giving them money, technology, and contributing to the Chinese threat are good ideas.
Propping up a communist totalitarian regime with capitalist dollars is suicidal. China is an enemy and should be treated as such instead of having the privilege of being a business associate. Doing business with a communist country will not transform it into a freedom-nurturing society.
They should be banned from this country.