Beijing-Linked Group Seeks to Sway US Media With Reporter Trips, Dinners With Execs

Beijing-Linked Group Seeks to Sway US Media With Reporter Trips, Dinners With Execs
Journalists sit next to the screens showing Chinese leader Xi Jinping delivering a speech via video for the opening ceremony of the 3rd China International Import Expo at a media center in Shanghai on Nov. 4, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images
Cathy He
Eva Fu
Updated:

A group tied to Beijing has organized trips to China for more than 120 journalists from almost 50 U.S. media outlets since 2009, as part of a broad campaign to deepen the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence in the United States.

Called the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), the group is a Hong Kong-based nonprofit headed by billionaire Tung Chee-hwa, a Chinese regime official. Tung was formerly the Chief Executive (top government leader) of Hong Kong and is currently a vice-chairman of the CCP’s political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. CUSEF is registered as a “foreign principal” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Cathy He is the politics editor at the Washington D.C. bureau. She was previously an editor for U.S.-China and a reporter covering U.S.-China relations.
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