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Knight Foundation, Funders of the “Fact-Checkers” Who Defend the CCP, is Heavily Invested in China
The Knight Foundation – a George Soros-linked, left-wing group purporting to tackle disinformation by funding anti-conservative media operations and “fact-checkers” – has investments in firms tied to the Russian government and Chinese Communist Party, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
The group’s most recent financial disclosures reveal over $17,000,000 invested in a Chinese Communist Party-linked investment fund and over $1,200,000 invested in Russia Partners – which boasts of its close connections to “government leaders in Russia.”
The unearthed financial ties come as the group continues to peddle conspiracy theories about Russian influence in the 2016 election and purports to “protect press freedom” while investing in countries whose journalism sectors are consistently ranked among the least free.
China Capital and Growth.
Since at least 2011, the Knight Foundation’s financial disclosure forms reveal two investments: IDG-Accel China Capital II and IDG-Accel China Growth III.
The most recent financial disclosure on the Knight Foundation’s site shows that in 2019 the value of the investments totaled $11,597,551 and $6,066,392, respectively.
From 2013 to 2015, the group’s financial disclosures also listed China as a “foreign country in which organization has financial interest.”
The two Chinese private equity funds describe themselves as “making investments within China” – and often in state-run companies.
At least a dozen of the fund’s employees have ties to the Chinese Communist Party, including former officials in the technology and urban planning sectors along with the State Department., former employees of the Chinese military proxy China Mobile, and recipients of Chinese Communist Party awards for “Pushing the Area Economy Forward.”
Senior Advisor Jianning Jiang also serves as a Chief Advisor to the body overseeing China’s various Communist Youth Leagues.
Chinese state-run media directors, several ex-employees of state-run investment funds, fellows from state-run think tanks, and professors and People’s Liberation Army-linked colleges.
Aimed at boosting the Chinese economy, the investment group describes one of its primary goals as “upgrading and transform[ing] the Chinese economy by partnering with Chinese companies to acquire technology and industrial know-how abroad” and admits to having “partnered” with the Chinese Communist Party city-level governments to do so.
Companies the firm has invested in have also count the Chinese Communist Party as customers and include firms such as Tencent – which has been described by the U.S. State Department as a “tool of the Chinese government” – in its portfolio.
…And Russia.
Under the guise of “combatting misinformation,” the left-wing foundation has funneled tens of millions of dollars into fact-checking operations used by platforms such as Facebook and mainstream media outlets.
And, given its repeated funding, event, and research collaboration with groups such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, often leverages these connections to go after conservative news sites.
Recently, a group funded by the Knight Foundation – Global Disinformation Index (GDI) – was responsible for “providing” The New York Times with the information for a hit piece on the anti-Chinese Communist Party outlet The Epoch Times.
“The data was provided by Advance Democracy, a research group, and analyzed by the nonprofit Global Disinformation Index, not provided solely by GDI,” the New York Times article reads after it was revised to include the source of its data.
https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/knight-foundation-china-russia-financial-ties/