By: Adam Pack, Daily Caller News Foundation
The Biden-Harris administration awarded tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to a left-wing nonprofit whose China office is under the supervision of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) foreign influence operation active in the United States, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.
In 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced two grant awards to the Vermont-based Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) totaling $60 million to serve as a “national grantmaker” for environmental justice projects and a “technical assistance center” for small environmental nonprofits applying for federal grants.
The ISC maintains an office in China that is closely linked to the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), a CCP espionage and propaganda actor affiliated with a Chinese influence and intelligence agency, and has frequently collaborated with Energy Foundation China (EFC), an environmental nonprofit with far-reaching ties to the Chinese government. The ISC’s China work has sought to improve China’s international climate image, advocate for closer ties between Chinese and American government bodies and legitimize the CCP’s actions on the environment, according to a DCNF examination of the ISC’s website and social media posts.
The ISC has been active in more than 30 Chinese cities since 2007. According to the ISC’s website, the nonprofit is currently working with 12 Chinese municipal governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants and help local Chinese leaders “drive national policy” on environmental issues.
In 2020, the ISC established a “Beijing representative office” in the country, which subjected the nonprofit to the mandatory supervision of a Chinese government entity and registration with Chinese security services. To obtain this new operating status, the ISC entered into a formal relationship with the CPAFFC and registered with the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, according to a statement on the ISC’s Chinese language website.
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Both the Trump and Biden administrations have designated the CPAFFC as central to the CCP’s “united front work,” which has long sought to spread the Party’s “influence and propaganda overseas.”
In October 2020, then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo terminated the U.S. government’s ties with the U.S.-China National Governors Forum due to the CPAFFC’s efforts to “undermine” the forum in support of CCP interests. A July 2022 report from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center under director of national intelligence Avril Haines reaffirmed the Trump administration’s findings that CPAFFC is a CCP “foreign influence operation” that “is entrusted by the PRC government with overseeing and developing ‘sister’ relationships between Chinese localities in the United States and other nations.”
Recent analysis from the Jamestown Foundation, a China-focused think tank, reported that a former CPAFFC head in 2019 defined the entity’s mission as manipulating foreigners into “sympathizing with, supporting, and explaining the cause of the CCP.”
The Jamestown Foundation has also written extensively on the Chinese government’s strategy to co-opt international environment nonprofits into serving the CCP’s agenda. Former Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has compared the work of global CCP influence-building entities like CPAFFC to “making idiots useful.”
The ISC received nearly $400,000 from EFC, a San Francisco-based environmental nonprofit with an office in Beijing, between 2019 and 2022, according to a review of EFC’s most recent tax filings by the DCNF. EFC spent more than $52 million bankrolling green energy projects and environmental organizations in the U.S. just in 2022.
The DCNF previously reported that at least nine members of EFC’s leadership previously served in China’s government
The ISC and EFC have partnered together on several climate-related projects in China, according to a DCNF review of both group’s websites.
In 2018, both organizations financially supported a “quality certification center” to “provide key technical assistance for pilot projects of near-zero carbon emissions zones in Guangdong.” In May 2023, the ISC and EFC held a “carbon neutrality practices for cities seminar” in Chinese, during which former ISC vice president of global programs, Trina Mallik, urged increased climate action coordination between Chinese cities and their foreign counterparts.
The ISC claims the nonprofit is currently promoting exchanges between American and Chinese cities and companies “through strategic peer learning opportunities.” According to a DCNF review of the China projects listed on the ISC’s website, the nonprofit has promoted exchanges between China and the U.S. as far back as 2009. In 2014, the ISC partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to promote climate-focused exchanges between Chinese and American cities in a program known as the U.S.-China Partnership for Climate Smart Low Carbon Cities (CSLCC). In 2017, USAID awarded the ISC and EFC $10 million to expand this program to 12 additional cities under a program called the Low Emissions City Alliance (LECA).
“LECA will include city exchanges between China and the United States,” an ISC document providing an overview of the LECA program says. “Exchanges allow cities from both countries to share strategies and approaches to shared challenges. In addition, the activity will provide market opportunities for U.S. businesses, particularly in energy and technology sectors. As select Chinese cities implement their early peaking strategies, mutual benefits will result from engagement with U.S. companies that offer relevant technologies and services addressing urban priorities.”
USAID did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment regarding the agency’s past partnerships with the ISC and EFC.
The ISC has also worked to improve China’s global climate standing as the country remains the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
In 2023, the ISC published a document that praised China’s environmental policies and quoted from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2021 speech to the United Nations General Assembly where he announced the country’s pledge to reach net carbon emissions by 2060.
“China is boldly committing to reducing carbon emissions to slow global warming,” reads the ISC document. “As the world’s largest GHG [greenhouse gas] emitter, China’s ‘moonshot’ goal holds the potential to eliminate 25% of the world’s net carbon emissions and will serve as a model for the international community.”
In its Chinese-language communications, the ISC frequently uses the Xi exhortation to “tell China’s stories well” abroad. In an August 2022 post on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, the ISC called for more exchanges between Chinese and foreign cities that would “tell China’s stories well” to the international community. This specific phrasing is CCP terminology that often refers to the Party’s “external propaganda work,” according to a 2023 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report.
In 2018 the ISC co-hosted a day of panel discussions alongside Chinese government entities and the EFC at the UN climate summit in Poland.
“This side event will invite national and local government officials, experts and representatives of relevant institutions to attend the meeting, sum up the excellent practices of China’s provinces and cities to deal with climate change, build a bridge of urban communication, and pass on the Chinese story to the outside world,” a days-long panel co-hosted by the ISC and the EFC said.
The ISC’s communications have also appeared to give credence to the CCP’s domestic and international legitimacy in addressing climate and environmental issues.
In a June 2022 blog post, the ISC claimed that China has “contributed to global climate governance with Chinese wisdom.” In the same post, the ISC also wrote that China has a responsibility and duty to “build a community with a shared future for mankind,” a direct call-out to Xi’s vision of a multipolar world order where the United States has much less power and influence. The ISC also claimed that China’s net-zero target is part of the CCP’s “ecological civilization” initiative.
“At the 2021 Leaders’ Summit on Climate, President Xi pointed out that the well-being of the people of all countries is closely related to the environment,” the ISC wrote in August 2022.
“ISC has been committed to supporting communities most impacted by the climate crisis for over 35 years. We have a robust track record of implementing work across the globe, with a history of projects spanning 5 continents,” Rebecca Kadaru, president of the ISC, told the DCNF in a written statement. “Our international work is separate from our US program portfolio and selection as an Environmental Justice Grantmaker.”
Kadaru added that “the EPA has no involvement” in ISC’s work in China.
The EFC did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
The Inflation Reduction Act’s $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants provision provided for $50 million out of the total $60 million the EPA has announced in grant funding to the ISC. The EPA did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment on the grants.
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