Rockefeller Brothers Fund Sent Nearly $32 Million to China-Based Nonprofits, Watchdog Finds
‘Dangerous partnership with Communist China’ is detailed in new report
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a $1.4 billion U.S.-based charity with funding from the Rockefeller family and other donors, has forged a "dangerous partnership with Communist China" and is pouring millions of dollars into China-based nonprofits that are advancing the Chinese Communist Party's foreign policy goals.
That's one of the findings in a new report, "The Rockefeller Network: How the Rockefeller Family Turned Their Oil Fortune into Extreme Climate Activism," out today from Americans for Public Trust, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative watchdog organization. The report, an advance copy of which was obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon, outlines how the billion-dollar fortune of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller Sr., who died in 1937, is being used "to quietly bankroll numerous radical and leftist projects."
While political spending by far-left billionaires and networks has attracted attention, the role of nonprofit organizations such as the Rockefeller network has been less extensively scrutinized, even though it is influential. If people think of Rockefeller charity at all, they might recall John D. Rockefeller Sr.'s role in founding the University of Chicago, where the Rockefeller Chapel is a campus landmark, or Abby Aldrich Rockefeller's role in founding New York City's Museum of Modern Art, where the central sculpture garden is named after her. Today's Rockefeller charities have taken a dramatic turn in a different direction, the new report says.
"The Rockefeller name used to be a symbol of philanthropy, but they have transformed into a tool of the far left," said the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, Caitlin Sutherland. "Between bankrolling China-based organizations connected to the Chinese Communist Party, including those driving the Belt and Road Initiative, and their climate activism and alarmism targeting the American energy sector, the Rockefeller Network is showing their true colors. It is long overdue for the Rockefeller Network to be exposed for the dangerous policies they are advocating for in America and around the world."
The section of the report devoted to China notes that "according to its own tax filings," the Rockefeller Brothers Fund "funneled nearly $32 million to China-based nonprofits."
"An alarming amount—well into the millions—has found its way directly into the coffers of entities that are either official vestiges of the Chinese government, or directly and irrefutably administered by the CCP and its representatives," the report says. "And many of these entities, while operating under the guise of 'green' and environmental research, are, instead, using these funds to help buttress China's foreign influence programs around the globe, especially the CCP's infamous 'Belt and Road Initiative.'"
Among the grants singled out in the report as most problematic:
— $400,000 between 2020 and 2024 to the Foreign Environment Cooperation Center, "a division of the Chinese government's Ministry of Ecology and Environment."
— Nearly $1.5 million to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, whose "direct ties to the Chinese government are undeniable."
— Nearly $200,000 to Tsinghua University, which announced in 2024 that the school's office of the president had merged with the Chinese Communist Party to "form a new Party Committee Office that would run the school."
In a section titled "Why RBF's Grants to China are so Alarming and Dangerous," the report notes that even innocuous-seeming grants in China are troubling because the entire nonprofit sector is entangled with the Chinese Communist Party. "China completely controls its nonprofit ecosystem, and utilizes it to exert influence on, intimidate, and even attack its opponents, both foreign and domestic," the report says. "As such, it is, in essence, currently impossible for nonprofit organizations—or 'social organizations' as they are generally known in China—to engage in any type of independent policy research, education, or advocacy without the purview and permission of the state."
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund didn't immediately reply to an email seeking comment on its China activities.
https://freebeacon.com/china/rockefeller-brothers-fund-sent-nearly-32-million-to-china-based-nonprofits-watchdog-finds/