NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE J ill Stein, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen, and a former executive director of Greenpeace all came to Code Pink’s defense this week in response to a new report about the activist group’s ties to the Chinese government. But amid this outpouring of support from the far left, a think tank that once lobbied Congress on China policy in tandem with Code Pink has so far kept its distance.

A New York Times investigation found that the bulk of Code Pink’s funding comes from American billionaire Neville Roy Singham, a pro-Beijing tech magnate and donor to progressive political candidates, who funds media networks and political causes around the world and coordinates his efforts with the Chinese Communist Party. He married Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans in 2018.

The revelations cast Code Pink’s previous lobbying efforts in a new light, especially given Singham’s reported interactions with CCP propaganda officials. The Times revealed that he has attended CCP propaganda-coordination conferences and, at a meeting in May, sat next to Yu Yunquan, a party official who oversees the dissemination of international editions of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

Code Pink, which did not respond to a request for comment, has gained notoriety in Washington for its many interruptions of congressional hearings and think-tank events — these days, frequently those that have to do with China. One of its activists interrupted the first hearing, in March, of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Speaking to the CCP’s Global Times outlet, Evans explained that Code Pink disrupted the committee’s hearing because “we knew they’d spread more hatred and fear about China.”

The Times report noted that while Code Pink once criticized Chinese human-rights abuses, in recent years it has echoed Beijing’s propaganda on the CCP’s atrocities against Uyghurs and its crackdown in Hong Kong. Although Code Pink is widely viewed as a fringe group that lacks credibility, it has wielded a considerable degree of influence, working with a coalition of like-minded groups throughout that pivot.

In a statement responding to the story over the weekend, several of those groups, including a few in Singham’s network and the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, rallied to the pro-Beijing activist network’s assistance, calling the Times’ reporting “the new McCarthyism.”

“Today, prominent organizations and individuals, including CODEPINK, The People’s Forum, and Tricontinental Institute have been targeted, with smears and accusations propagated by outlets like The New York Times,” the statement read, naming two other outfits connected to Singham’s dark-money network. The statement got a favorable write-up by China’s Xinhua news agency this week.

Meanwhile, the pro-Pyongyang outfit Women Cross DMZ initially accused the Times of engaging in “very sophisticated red-baiting,” though Code Pink later took the group’s statement of support down. Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen sent his own message of support, writing: “The NYT wouldn’t want you or anyone else standing in the way of the newest justification for Pentagon excess and our government’s policy of economic violence.”

But one prominent Code Pink partner, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that promotes “restraint” in U.S. foreign policy, has so far declined to publicly defend Code Pink. 

That’s despite Code Pink’s history of cooperation with the Quincy Institute, which was funded by billionaire philanthropists George Soros and Charles Koch. Code Pink has hosted Quincy’s executive director Trita Parsi for a discussion on Iran and collaborated with the think tank on a research report that recommended the closing of overseas U.S. military bases. Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin has written several times for the Quincy Institute’s blog.

Code Pink has repeatedly partnered with Quincy on several Asia-focused initiatives. In 2021, Code Pink teamed up with a coalition of similar organizations to lobby against U.S. policies intended to enable competition with China, as it did when it signed, among dozens of other groups, a letter drafted by then–Quincy Institute research fellow Rachel Odell urging lawmakers to tank legislation addressing Beijing’s threats. The letter warned that “a growing Cold War mentality” drives U.S. policy toward China and said that the “demonization” of China would fuel an arms race and violence against Asian Americans.

Odell later joined the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, while another former Quincy fellow, Jessica Lee, was subsequently appointed to a political post within its Bureau of Legislative Affairs, where she coordinates the department’s engagement with Congress on the Indo-Pacific.

That cooperation continues to the present day. A Quincy fellow was slated to speak at a Code Pink panel in Chicago on Wednesday focused on fostering cooperation between the U.S. and China, but the event was postponed without explanation. A spokesperson for the Quincy Institute did not respond to a list of questions, including one about whether the cancellation was prompted by the New York Times’ reporting and whether Quincy was previously aware of Code Pink’s ties to the Chinese regime.