The software moghul who went over to the commies?

Mara Hvistendahl, David A. Fahrenthold, Lynsey Chutel and Ishaan Jhaveri

The protest in London’s bustling Chinatown brought together a variety of activist groups to oppose a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. So it was peculiar when a street brawl broke out among mostly ethnic Chinese demonstrators.

Witnesses said the fight, in November 2021, started when men aligned with the event’s organisers, including a group called No Cold War, attacked activists supporting the democracy movement in Hong Kong.

On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against China has distracted from issues such as climate change and racial injustice.

In fact, a New York Times investigation found, it is part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda. At the centre is a charismatic American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, who is known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes.

What is less known, and is hidden amid a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies, is that Singham works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.

From a think tank in Massachusetts to an event space in Manhattan, from a political party in South Africa to news organisations in India and Brazil, NYT tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.

Some, such as No Cold War, popped up in recent years. Others, including the American anti-war group Code Pink, have morphed over time. Code Pink once criticised China’s rights record but now defends its internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, which human rights experts have labelled a crime against humanity.

These groups are funded through US nonprofits flush with at least $275 million in donations.

But Singham, 69, himself sits in Shanghai, where one outlet in his network is co-producing a YouTube show financed in part by the city’s propaganda department. Two others are working with a Chinese university to “spread China’s voice to the world.” And last month, Singham joined a Communist Party workshop about promoting the party internationally.

Singham says he does not work at the direction of the Chinese government. But the line between him and the propaganda apparatus is so blurry that he shares office space — and his groups share staff members — with a company whose goal is to educate foreigners about “the miracles that China has created on the world stage.”

Years of research have shown how disinformation, both homegrown and foreign-backed, influences mainstream conservative discourse. Singham’s network shows what that process looks like on the left.

He and his allies are on the front line of what Communist Party officials call a “smokeless war.” Under the rule of Xi Jinping, China has expanded state media operations, teamed up with overseas outlets and cultivated foreign influencers. The goal is to disguise propaganda as independent content.

The NYT untangled the web of charities and shell companies using nonprofit and corporate filings, internal documents and interviews with over two dozen former employees of groups linked to Singham. Some groups, including No Cold War, do not seem to exist as legal entities but are tied to the network through domain registration records and shared organisers.

None of Singham’s nonprofits have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as is required of groups that seek to influence public opinion on behalf of foreign powers. That usually applies to groups taking money or orders from foreign governments. Legal experts said Singham’s network was an unusual case.

Most of the groups in Singham’s network declined to answer questions from the NYT. Three said they had never received money or instructions from a foreign government or political party.

Singham did not offer substantive answers to questions from the NYT. He said he abided by the tax laws in countries where he was active.

“I categorically deny and repudiate any suggestion that I am a member of, work for, take orders from, or follow instructions of any political party or government or their representatives,” he wrote in an email. “I am solely guided by my beliefs, which are my long-held personal views.”

Indeed, his associates say Singham has long admired Maoism, the communist ideology that gave rise to modern China. He praised Venezuela under leftist president Hugo Chávez as a “phenomenally democratic place.” And a decade before moving to China, he said the world could learn from its governing approach.

The son of a leftist academic, Archibald Singham, Singham is a longtime activist who founded Chicago-based software consultancy Thoughtworks.

There, Singham came across as a charming showman who prided himself on creating an egalitarian corporate culture. He was unabashed about his politics. A former company technical director, Majdi Haroun, recalled Singham lecturing him on Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. Haroun said employees sometimes jokingly called each other “comrade.”

In 2017, Singham married Jodie Evans, a former Democratic political adviser and co-founder of Code Pink. The wedding, in Jamaica, was a “Who’s Who” of progressivism. Photos from the event show Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!”; Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; and V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, who wrote “The Vagina Monologues.”

It was also a working event. The invitation described a panel discussion called “The Future of the Left.”

Singham had a plan for that future. He had quietly funded left-wing causes while at Thoughtworks. But his activism was about to intensify. Six months after his wedding, he sold Thoughtworks to a private equity firm. A copy of the sale agreement put the price at $785 million.

“I decided that at my age and extreme privilege, the best thing I could do was to give away most of my money in my lifetime,” he said in his statement.

The network takes shape

While other moguls slapped their names on foundations, Singham sent his money through a system that concealed his giving.

At its centre were four new nonprofits with dust-dry names like “United Community Fund” and “Justice and Education Fund.” They have almost no real-world footprints, listing their addresses only as UPS store mailboxes in Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York.

Because US nonprofit groups do not need to disclose individual donors, these four nonprofits worked like a financial geyser, throwing out a shower of money from an invisible source.

In their public filings, none list Singham as a board member or donor. “I do not control them,” he said in his statement, “although I have been known to share my opinions.”

In reality, Singham has close ties to all four.

The largest is run by Evans. The group’s founding bylaws say that Singham can fire her and the rest of the board. They also require that the group dissolve after Singham’s death.

The other three groups were founded by former Thoughtworks employees, according to interviews with other former Thoughtworks staff members and résumés posted online.

In his statement, Singham acknowledged giving his money to unnamed intermediaries that fit the description of these four UPS store nonprofits. And several groups that received donations from them have identified Singham as the source.

One of them is Massachusetts-based think tank Tricontinental. Its executive director, Vijay Prashad, recounted Singham’s financing in 2021. “A Marxist with a massive software company!” he wrote on Twitter.

Tricontinental produces videos and articles on socialist issues. Prashad did not answer questions about Singham, but said the organisation followed the law. “We do not and have never received funds or instructions from any government or political party,” he said in a statement.

From the UPS store nonprofits, millions of dollars flowed around the world. The NYT tracked money to a South African political party, YouTube channels in the US and nonprofits in Ghana and Zambia. In Brazil, records show, money flowed to a group that produces a publication, Brasil de Fato, that intersperses articles about land rights with praise for Xi.

In New Delhi, corporate filings show, Singham’s network financed a news site, NewsClick, that sprinkled its coverage with Chinese government talking points. “China’s history continues to inspire the working classes,” one video said.

These groups operate in coordination. They have cross-posted articles and shared one another’s content on social media hundreds of times. Many share staff members and office space. They organise events together and interview one another’s representatives without disclosing their ties.

‘Always follow the Party’

Singham’s office, adorned in red and yellow, sits on the 18th floor of Shanghai’s well-heeled Times Square. A visit shows that he is not alone.

He shares the office with a Chinese media company called Maku Group, which says its goal is to “tell China’s story well,” a term commonly used for foreign propaganda. In a Chinese-language job advertisement, Maku says it produces text, audio and videos for “global networks of popular media and progressive think tanks.”

It can be hard to tell where Maku begins and Singham’s groups end.

Nonprofit filings show that nearly $1.8 million flowed from one of the UPS store nonprofits to Maku Group. And in 2021, Maku and Tricontinental agreed to work with a Shanghai university to “tell China’s story” in Chinese and English.

Maku’s website shows young people gathering in Singham’s office, facing a red banner that reads, in Chinese, “Always Follow the Party.” Resting on a shelf is a plate depicting Xi.

Maku Group did not respond to a request to comment. After the NYT began asking questions, its website went down for maintenance.

In 2020, Singham emailed his friends to introduce a newsletter, now called Dongsheng News, that covers China in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Drawing stories from the state media, it blends lighthearted news with bureaucratic official prose.

Dongsheng’s editors, in China, come from Tricontinental, but its address leads to the People’s Forum, a Manhattan event space also funded by Singham. Dongsheng “provides unique progressive coverage of China that has been sadly missing,” Singham told friends.

His ties to the propaganda machine date back at least to 2019, when, corporate documents show, he started a consulting business with Chinese partners. Those partners are active in the propaganda apparatus, co-owning with the municipal government of Tongren a media company that promotes anti-poverty policies. Organisations in Singham’s network have published at least a dozen items about peasants there.

Code Pink

Evans, 68, was once a Democratic insider who managed the 1992 presidential campaign of California Governor Jerry Brown.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, she reinvented herself as an activist. She became known for pink peace-sign earrings and sit-ins that ended with her arrest.

She helped form Code Pink to protest the looming war in Iraq. The group became notorious for disrupting Capitol Hill hearings.

Evans has organised around progressive causes including climate change, gender and racism. Until a few years ago, she readily criticised China’s authoritarian government. “We demand China stop brutal repression of their women’s human rights defenders,” she wrote on Twitter in 2015. She later posted on Instagram a photo with Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei.

Since 2017, about one-quarter of Code Pink’s donations — more than $1.4 million — have come from two groups linked to Singham. The first was one of the UPS store nonprofits. The second was a charity that Goldman Sachs offers as a conduit for clients’ giving, and that Singham has used in the past.

Evans now stridently supports China. She casts it as a defender of the oppressed and a model for economic growth without slavery or war.

Evans declined to answer questions about funding from her husband but said Code Pink had never taken money from any government.

Few on the US political left would discuss the couple publicly, fearing lawsuits or harassment. Others said that criticism would undermine progressive causes. But Howie Hawkins, the 2020 Green Party presidential nominee, said he had soured on Code Pink and others in the Singham network that presented themselves as pro-labour but supported governments that suppressed workers.

“They are capitalising on very legitimate concerns in order to push this pro-authoritarian narrative,” said Brian Hioe, an editor with New Bloom, a progressive Taiwanese news site. “And their ideas end up circulating in a way that affects mainstream discourse.”

Chinese state media accounts have retweeted people and organisations in Singham’s network at least 122 times since February 2020, an NYT analysis found, mostly accounts connected with No Cold War and Code Pink.

Just last month, Singham attended a Chinese Communist Party propaganda forum. In a photo, taken during a breakout session on how to promote the party abroad, Singham is seen jotting in a notebook adorned with a red hammer and sickle.