Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent letters to three major left-of-center philanthropies on Tuesday questioning their compliance with tax regulations in light of their grants to Chinese government entities, as reported by the Washington Examiner.
Grassley is investigating the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Ford Foundation, citing reports from the Washington Examiner that the trio of nonprofit organizations have provided funding to Chinese government agencies, state-run universities, and even efforts to support China’s Belt and Road strategy — a global infrastructure investment program that observers argue empowers the Chinese Communist Party to leverage debt against developing countries to extract political concessions. The letters question how the liberal charities are meeting the legal requirements for tax exemption, given that the IRS states that “direct grants to foreign governments do not serve [Internal Revenue Code] 501(c)(3) purposes.”
“According to recent reports, [your organizations], through grants and direct payments, have funded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its allies,” Grassley wrote. “To maintain tax-exempt status, an organization’s activities must be charitable in nature and may not directly support or promote the interests of a foreign government. I am writing today to ask you whether these reports are true or not and, if true, how your organization’s conduct comports with 501(c)(3) requirements.”
Indeed, tax forms filed by the philanthropies themselves attest to their foreign donations.
Filings made by the three groups in recent years, for example, disclose millions of dollars in donations to China’s Ministries of Commerce, Agriculture, and Ecology, alongside their subsidiaries, as well as organizations managed by China’s State Council, the country’s supreme government administrative organ, leaving little room for ambiguity.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, for instance, donated $7.4 million to organizations that are either part of the Chinese government, led by members of the CCP, or engaged in partnerships with China between April 2020 and August 2024, the Washington Examiner previously reported. The Gates Foundation, meanwhile, directed roughly $11.7 million into various arms of the CCP, plus $2 million to CRRC — a rail company the Pentagon says is part of China’s military apparatus — and an additional $6.7 million to Chinese state-run universities in 2023 alone.
The Ford Foundation, which paid out nearly $10 million between April 2020 and November 2023 to various arms of the Chinese government, attracted particular scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee owing to the grants it issued with the goal of helping China carry out its strategy of funding foreign infrastructure projects to accumulate influence.
Grants issued by the Ford Foundation during this period provided Chinese government entities with resources to advertise the Belt and Road program to stakeholders in the global south, compile databases related to such infrastructure projects, train individuals to lead the CCP’s global infrastructure investment ventures, and conduct research intended to improve the efficacy and outcomes of such projects.
U.S. policymakers and foreign policy experts have expressed concern that China’s Belt and Road strategy is being used to expand the CCP’s global influence and alienate the United States from its allies.
Grants paid out by the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also touched on the Belt and Road initiative, albeit to a lesser extent.
AMERICA’S GREEN MOVEMENT HAS A CHINA PROBLEM
Many of the state-run Chinese universities that received funding from the trio of foundations — notably Tsinghua, Peking, Sun Yat-Sen, and Shanghai Jiao Tong universities — research military technology for the People’s Liberation Army and participate in other partnerships with China’s armed forces, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Grassley has given the three organizations until Nov. 10 to answer a series of questions about their compliance with tax laws. His committee is seeking answers on whether their grants have been used to support “Chinese government projects and initiatives,” how many foreign projects these charities funded, whether the nonprofit groups directly funded foreign governments, how the organizations made their decisions to fund these Chinese projects, and whether their foreign grants followed the strict IRS guidelines governing them.
