One of the largest environmentalist charities receiving public funding in the United States maintains a branch in China in which multiple former members of the Chinese government hold senior leadership positions.
The Nature Conservancy, a northern Virginia-based nonprofit organization that controls roughly $10 billion in assets, has maintained a presence in China since the Chinese government first invited it to aid conservation efforts nearly 30 years ago. Since then, the organization’s footprint in China has grown to several offices in major cities and over 60 staffers.
Of these staffers, many at the very top, including the China program’s director and multiple executives, are alumni of the Chinese government. The chairman of the China program’s board currently works with the CCP as a consultant aiding its highest administrative body in pushing Chinese influence abroad while other board members maintain similarly strong ties to the Chinese state. While allowing its China program to be led by those close to the CCP, the Nature Conservancy has received tens of millions of dollars’ worth of federal grant funding.
Ying Wu, the board chairman, simultaneously serves as a consultant for the State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. The State Council is the “executive body of the supreme organ of state power” in China, according to the National People’s Congress, the country’s CCP-controlled legislative body.
A Canadian court ruled in 2022 that the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office conducts espionage and spies on Chinese people living abroad. The office is part of the United Front Work Department, an entity that works to influence people and organizations outside of China for the benefit of the CCP.
Tencent CEO Ma Huateng, who sits alongside Ying on the board, served two terms as part of China’s National People’s Congress. WeChat, a Tencent-owned messaging service popular in China, engages in censorship and surveillance on behalf of the CCP, according to Human Rights Watch. The company has provided the Chinese government with materials that have led to the arrests of religious minorities and political dissidents. Even those using WeChat outside of China are subject to its surveillance. Pharmaceutical CEO Baoguo Zhu, also a board member, previously served in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a government entity describing itself as “a major achievement of the Communist Party of China” that works to integrate “Marxist-Leninist theories on the united front, political parties, and democratic politics with the unique realities and fine traditional culture of China.”
“Almost no one would argue that conservation and care for the environment is a bad thing,” Capital Research Center spokeswoman Sarah Lee told the Washington Examiner. “But given the Nature Conservancy’s close connections with a newly ‘green’ Chinese economy and its ability to sell donated land for ‘environmental’ use to private landowners at the same time stories emerge of CCP-affiliated businessmen and women purchasing land in the U.S. for wind turbine production and the like, it would be wise to keep a close eye on exactly how these partnerships are developing, and for what reasons.”
China’s focus on green energy development has a strategic component, according to some policy analysts. Those at the Heritage Foundation argue it is part of a broader effort to “transform its energy resource vulnerabilities into a net advantage” as China lacks significant fossil fuel reserves but dominates in solar panel, wind turbine, and electric vehicle manufacturing.
“China’s growing control of and influence over global energy supply chains is providing it with new sources of leverage,” the Heritage Foundation analysts wrote in May.
It is by no means a requirement for arms of American charities operating in China to hand over leadership positions to former Chinese government officials. The Beijing Dalio Public Welfare Foundation, the China-based arm of hedge fund manager Ray Dalio’s philanthropic network, is led by a woman with no government experience on her public resume, for instance.
Downstream of the board of directors, senior employees working on behalf of the Nature Conservancy in China also hold strong links to the Chinese government.
Zhu Da, who leads the Nature Conservancy’s China program, previously served in China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Among the other former ecology ministry officials occupying high positions in the Nature Conservancy’s China program are the organization’s director of external affairs and the senior manager of its zero-conversion commodity program.
Many of the Nature Conservancy’s goals as it relates to environmentalism are aligned with those of the Chinese Communist Party. The organization, for instance, states on its website that it “works closely with the Chinese government” to address matters related to climate change. One of the main work areas outlined on the organization’s website is helping developers in China select sites for renewable energy projects by conducting research alongside the Chinese government.
The Nature Conservancy China’s chief innovation officer, who previously served as a program officer at China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, expanded further on the organization’s collaboration with the Chinese government by stating on his LinkedIn profile that it had provided support for the State Council’s Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan.
One of the organization’s top communications officials previously held a senior role at the People’s Daily, the publication of the CCP. The People’s Daily conducts propaganda efforts on behalf of the Chinese government, prompting the U.S. government to designate it as an arm of the Chinese government. In 2021, a joint New York Times and ProPublica investigation found that the publication was part of a CCP-run propaganda campaign to deny human rights abuses against Uyghurs in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
The Nature Conservancy’s China program receives considerable funding from Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant that has collaborated extensively with the Chinese government and reportedly developed and sold facial recognition technology calibrated to detect the faces of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.
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Other Chinese government alumni who work for the Nature Conservancy’s China program include its sustainable agriculture director and Inner Mongolia program director, who both worked for the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The organization’s chief scientific officer and director of climate change and energy, meanwhile, both served in the Chinese Academy of Forestry while its chief conservation officer is an alumnus of China’s State Economic and Trade Commission.
The Nature Conservancy’s American and Chinese office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.
