Investigative reporter Natalie Winters says records from a Chinese Communist Party-linked foundation show that prominent American journalists participated in sponsored trips while the organization’s representatives discussed obtaining favorable coverage and spreading positive messages about Beijing.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Foreign-agent filings, archived publications and media disclosures indicate that more than 20 current and former American journalists participated in trips or exchange programs organized or financed by a foundation tied to China’s Communist Party influence apparatus, according to a new investigation by reporter Natalie Winters.
The journalists worked for or contributed to outlets including The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, NPR, The Associated Press, Vox, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
Winters’ Substack investigation does not establish that the journalists received salaries from the Chinese government or were paid to publish specific articles. It alleges that the China-United States Exchange Foundation, or CUSEF, funded travel and cultivated relationships with journalists while representatives working on the organization’s behalf discussed generating “favorable coverage” and disseminating “positive messages” about Beijing.
Foreign-agent filings show that operatives representing the foundation sought to arrange journalist travel based partly on the likelihood that participants would produce favorable reporting.
“The identities were buried,” Winters wrote.
She said the federal filings did not assemble a public list of the journalists who traveled through the programs. Her investigation matched those records with CUSEF’s archived 2009 newsletter, 2010 newsletter, 2012 annual report and contemporaneous descriptions of the trips.
The resulting list included Ezra Klein, a Vox co-founder and New York Times columnist; Matthew Yglesias, another Vox co-founder; CNN senior political analyst and Atlantic senior editor Ronald Brownstein; New York Times reporter Bradford Plumer; former Associated Press vice president and editor Marjorie Miller; and former Hill editor-at-large Steve Clemons.
Other participants identified in the records were former New Yorker editor and current MS NOW national security reporter David Rohde; MSNBC commentator Jonathan Alter; former NPR Managing Editor David Sweeney; former Yahoo Finance columnist Daniel Gross; and former NPR senior editor Marilyn Geewax.
Winters also listed former Newsweek and Wall Street Journal Marketplace editor Kathleen Deveny; former U.S. News & World Report correspondent Tom Omestad; former Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman; former National Journal correspondent Bruce Stokes; and former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief Craig Gilbert.
The remaining names were Salt Lake Tribune reporter Tony Semerad; former Week columnist Shikha Dalmia; former Newsweek senior writer Jonathan Broder; former Chicago Tribune associate managing editor Cristi Kempf; Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor Jon Healey; and former Foreign Affairs reporter Julian Pecquet.
Winters later posted the names in a series on X, followed by an additional post.
CUSEF was founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a former vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. That body is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front system, which congressional investigators have described as an effort to influence institutions and neutralize opposition to Beijing’s policies.
A bipartisan congressional report cited by Winters said the United Front works 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 that shape public opinion.
Foreign-agent records examined in the investigation describe Washington lobbyists and public-relations firms working for CUSEF as seeking influential journalists who could provide “favorable coverage” and help “effectively disseminate positive messages to the media, key influencers and opinion leaders, and the general public” about China.
Those statements describe the foundation’s reported objectives. They do not, by themselves, prove that any participating journalist agreed to alter coverage, accepted a bribe or published material under Beijing’s direction.
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell publicly disclosed that CUSEF paid for one of her China trips.
“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,” she wrote beneath two columns.
Winters argued that the disclosure identified the source of the travel funding but did not explain that representatives of the organization had discussed the broader journalist program in terms of favorable coverage and positive messaging.
Her investigation also reviewed commentary published by several participants after their travel.
Dalmia published a 2010 column titled “China Bashing is for Losers” during the year of her China trip.
Plumer later wrote about Beijing’s climate policies in an article titled “China’s ambitious plan to limit carbon emissions, explained.”
Stokes argued that economic separation from China would “backfire,” according to the investigation.
Rampell later criticized the Trump administration’s China strategy, including in a 2019 column titled “Team Trump should be careful what it wishes for on China.”
One dispatch from her CUSEF-funded trip described Chinese officials’ objections to U.S. scrutiny of Huawei, allegations of currency manipulation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Rampell urged both countries to move away from a “zero-sum-game attitude.”
The investigation highlighted Rohde’s writing after his participation in a CUSEF-organized trip.
“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,” Rohde wrote.
In another archived article, he said American businesses could find opportunities in the Chinese market.
“Those successes show that, for all the attacks from American politicians on Chinese currency manipulation, American companies can find profits in China,” Rohde wrote.
He also argued that Americans should accept that industrial production lost to overseas markets would not fully return.
“Americans, meanwhile, should accept that large-scale manufacturing will never return to the United States,” he wrote.
Rohde concluded that American companies should benefit from China’s rise while dismissing some political arguments in Washington as “ideological babble.”
Klein wrote on X during the COVID-19 pandemic that China’s early response may have given the United States time to prepare.
“I keep hearing that China bought us some real time and our government wasted it doing nothing and downplaying the threat,” Klein wrote.
Yglesias once joked about offering advice to Communist Party propagandists, saying he wanted to “give Party flunkies notes” about how to improve their “propaganda.”
He separately wrote, “Moody’s, S&P, and the People’s Bank of China should just run the government.”
Yglesias was affiliated at the time with the Center for American Progress, an organization whose former employees later served in numerous positions within the Biden administration.
Chapman repeatedly criticized Trump’s China trade policies, including in a post stating, “China may have a bad human rights record, but you don’t have to take off your shoes for airport security.”
He also wrote a subsequently deleted column making “the case for buying U.S. Olympic outfits from China.”
Brownstein opposed Trump’s trade confrontation with Beijing and later criticized efforts to blame China for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to Winters.
Former NPR editor Geewax later served as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, the Beijing university attended by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The investigation also traced personal and professional connections between several trip participants and officials associated with former President Joe Biden.
Stokes is married to Wendy Sherman, who served as Biden’s deputy secretary of state.
Clemons interacted publicly with Biden during the then-vice president’s 2013 visit to China. Biden introduced Clemons to Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao as “a very important man.”
“He’s the one you really want to speak to,” Biden said while encouraging the Chinese official to speak with Clemons.
Clemons later wrote commentary examining the changing balance between China and the United States and argued that “Biden gets China”. He also wrote approvingly about a developing “new global order” in which China would serve as an “anchor.”
Winters argued that the central issue was not simply that journalists traveled to China or later published opinions favorable to engagement with Beijing. Her report focused on whether a foreign-linked organization deliberately selected influential reporters and shaped their access while its representatives discussed desired media outcomes.
“The scandal is not simply that American journalists traveled to China,” Winters wrote.
“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.’”
She contended that sponsored travel could influence coverage without requiring direct instructions about what a journalist should write.
“Beijing did not need to purchase an American newspaper or dictate every sentence,” Winters wrote. “It could pay for access, curate the itinerary, arrange meetings with officials and allow trusted American voices to deliver the preferred conclusions.”
The records cited by Winters support scrutiny of CUSEF’s stated media strategy and the transparency surrounding its sponsored travel. They do not independently demonstrate that every named journalist knowingly participated in a Chinese influence operation or received undisclosed compensation in exchange for particular reporting.
The investigation raises questions about whether disclosures accompanying sponsored foreign travel adequately informed readers of the funder’s political relationships, registered foreign-agent activity and stated interest in favorable media coverage.
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