The Ford Foundation, one of the largest private charities in the world, has spent the last four years shoveling millions of dollars into branches of the Chinese government with the stated goal of helping China carry out its strategy of funding foreign influence projects to accumulate influence.
An October 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog organization of the U.S. government, found that China invested $679 billion in 165 countries between 2013 and 2021 as part of its global infrastructure initiative. The GAO went on to report that infrastructure spending has provided China with the ability to leverage debt against developing countries to extract political concessions and given the Chinese Communist Party a massive global telecommunications foothold. Despite the political nature of China’s foreign infrastructure investment program, the Ford Foundation has paid out nearly $10 million since 2020 to arms of the Chinese government to assist the CCP in carrying it out, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of grant records.
“The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t primarily use development loans to develop Global South economies,” Michael Sobolik, American Foreign Policy Council senior fellow and author of Countering China’s Great Game, told the Washington Examiner. “It leverages them to export authoritarianism and create economic dependency on Beijing. American foundations shouldn’t be furthering those malign objectives.”
Among other things, the Ford Foundation provided Chinese government entities with funding to advertise China’s infrastructure program to stakeholders in the global south, create databases containing information about China’s international investments, train people to lead the country’s global investment projects, and conduct research relating to the efficiency and outcomes of the spending.
“The Ford Foundation works to help ensure that China’s impacts in the world are equitable,” a spokesman for the charity told the Washington Examiner. “The grants referenced help advance this aim by supporting research and knowledge sharing that promote equitable and sustainable investment and development finance practices.”
Winning the lion’s share of the Ford Foundation’s grant funding were state-run universities that have a history of collaboration with China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Peking University, for instance, has received roughly $5 million since 2020 from the Ford Foundation for a variety of projects related to China’s global investments. About $1.3 million of Peking University’s Ford Foundation grants went toward funding the university’s development and maintenance of a database recording “China’s engagement with Africa.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars more flowed from the Ford Foundation to Peking University to fund research to support China’s development goals abroad, according to grant records.
Peking University has deep ties to the CCP and Chinese military, hosting a multitude of defense labs and assisting the Chinese navy in research, training, construction, and exerting cultural soft power, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank funded primarily by the Australian government. Some experts have characterized China’s foreign investment activities as a means to exert soft power.
Tsinghua and Zhejiang universities also received funds totaling $650,000 to conduct research in support of Chinese foreign investment. Zhejiang University hosts three major laboratories that conduct defense research and work with the PLA on classified projects. Meanwhile, Tsinghua University operates eight laboratories that produce research to bolster China’s military and offers a joint computer science program with the PLA’s Academy of Military Science. Computers at the university were linked to a 2018 espionage campaign against the Alaskan government.
Beijing Normal University, another state-run institution, received a grant worth $150,000 in 2020 specifically to fund its Belt and Road School.
“The [Belt and Road Initiative] is the PRC’s signature foreign policy initiative that aims to strengthen the PRC’s global standing and influence,” the GAO report says. “This initiative seeks to expand the foreign presence of Chinese state firms, create new markets for PRC goods, and secure access to strategic commodities for the PRC’s economic development. The BRI is considered by some observers to pose a significant challenge to U.S. economic, political and security interests around the world.”
The Ford Foundation-funded school at Beijing Normal University serves to promote the Belt and Road Initiative and train people to work on infrastructure projects in developing countries. China Agricultural University, which supports the Belt and Road Initiative through its Belt and Road Agricultural Cooperation Institute, received $650,000 from the Ford Foundation between 2021 and 2023 to foster engagement between China and the global south.
African civil society representatives interviewed by the GAO said China’s infrastructure investment “provides the [People’s Republic of China] greater political and diplomatic influence in their country.” Experts also told GAO that China’s global infrastructure strategy provides an opportunity for the nation to project greater military power by acquiring footholds in strategic ports and other important locations.
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State-run universities aside, the Ford Foundation also paid out grants directly to Chinese government agencies with the aim of supporting the CCP’s foreign investment strategy.
The China Development Research Foundation, established by China’s State Council, received $600,000 from the Ford Foundation in 2020 “to conduct studies on China’s international assistance framework and policies, including grant support, development loans and technical cooperation, for better development and environmental, social and governance outcomes in the Global South.” The State Council is the “executive body of the supreme organ of state power” in China, according to China’s National People’s Congress.
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Meanwhile, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s preeminent public academic body, received $200,000 from the Ford Foundation to “examine China’s investment projects in the Global South from a gender perspective.” CAS is run by CCP member Hou Jianguo, who, in 2020, wrote that the agency “will be guided by Xi Jinping’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics for [a] new era.”
The Ford Foundation doesn’t take donations but instead funds its grants using investment proceeds from its endowment, according to the charity’s website. Darren Walker, who worked in law and banking before pivoting to the philanthropic sector, is the foundation’s current president. Laurene Powell Jobs, a Democratic megadonor and close friend of Vice President Kamala Harris, sits on the charity’s board of trustees.