A media outlet that has been the recipient of funding and written contributions from George Soros, Bill Gates, the United Nations, and Google is involved in “media partnership” deals with various Chinese state-run media outlets.
The outlet in question, Project Syndicate, was founded in 1995 and has been lauded by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It has even published content defending the genocide against Uighur Muslims in the province of Xinjiang in Western China as “objective and informative.”
Project Syndicate states that it collects payment from other outlets to allow them to publish its op-eds and analyses in those papers.
“News organizations in developed countries provide financial contributions for the rights to Project Syndicate commentaries, which enables us to offer these rights for free, or at subsidized rates, to newspapers and other media in the developing world,” its website explains.
But among its partners are Chinese state-controlled outlets such as China Global Television Network (CGTN), China Daily, and Global Times.
The National Pulse notes:
Together, these sites have published nearly 2,000 articles from the outlet, including content praising the Chinese Communist Party and attacking the U.S. and populism. What’s more, the Chinese state-run media outlets appear to exploit Project Syndicate content for legitimacy, often burying the fact that the content was obtained through Project Syndicate at the bottom of articles:
Project Syndicate’s website reveals the operation is funded by several foundations including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Google Digital News Initiative, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Since 2012, the Gates Foundation has pumped $5,280,186 into Project Syndicate for grants in the “Global Health and Development Public Awareness and Analysis” field. Bill and Melinda Gates themselves have written articles for the site.
Google News Initiative has funded Project Syndicate through its Digital News Innovation Fund, earning a “medium” grant valued at roughly $260,000.
Soros’ Open Society Foundations has donated $707,105 to Project Syndicate since 2018; Soros himself has penned 110 op-eds for the outlet.
Last month, The New American reported that Microsoft founder Bill Gates has addressed and advised a number of groups that constitute China’s United Front, the regime’s leading propaganda effort with the goal of influencing Western nations to “take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”
For example, Gates has served on a steering committee for the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF). CUSEF sponsors trips of American journalists, students, and former politicians to China so they can meet with Chinese government officials.
Gates was on a CUSEF steering committee “providing valuable advice and comment” on a report from 2013 entitled “US-China Economic Relations In The Next Ten Years: Towards Deeper Engagement And Mutual Benefit.”
Moreover, Gates, along with former former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, spoke at a 2012 forum hosted by the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC).
The U.S. government has described CAIFC as “a front organization for the former General Political Department” for the CCP, performing “dual roles of intelligence collection and conducting propaganda and perception management campaigns.”
America’s mainstream media also has many ties to China’s communist government.
For example, several former CNN employees have gone on to work for the state-controlled China Global Television Network (CGTN). One of these former employees is Sean Callebs, a 20-year CNN correspondent (from 1989 to 2009) currently working as a national correspondent for CGTN.
During his time with the Chinese propaganda outlet, Callebs has championed the Russia collusion narrative. He has also praised the CCP’s environmental policies, even though the East Asian country is a top polluter with the world’s biggest share of greenhouse-gas emissions.
Then there’s Karina Huber, a New York correspondent for CGTN. During her time there, she advocated against President Trump’s tariffs by playing up America’s dependence of Chinese goods and characterized the Trump administration’s decision to curtail Chinese student visas as “bad public policy, bad for higher education, and bad for the country.”
And there’s Politifact, the “fact-checking” website widely used by mainstream institutions. Bill Adair, Politifact’s founder, was a “journalist in residence” in 2012 for the U.S.-China Education Trust (USCET), which hosts journalism programs aimed at advising Chinese Communist Party-run media outlets and journalism schools.
At this point, are there any major institutions in America that aren’t compromised by Communist China?
