Philanthropy by the Tang Family Enables Chinese Influence in Politics
The Tangs move from philanthropy to politics with the Committee of 100
This report originally appeared in Restoration of America News and is reprinted with permission.
In a recent report, Restoration News examined Oscar and Agnes Tang, prominent Chinese-American philanthropists who have stepped into the “donor spotlight” in the wake of what they see as a rise in anti-China sentiment after COVID. The report showed that the Tangs have directed their philanthropy toward the same institutions used by anti-populist operators in America’s past. Like these operators, they push a highly specific vision of America that emphasizes internationalism, multiculturalism, and marginalization. And, though they speak the language of a marginalized group, they are deeply connected to America’s elite institutions.
Operators like the Tangs have always trod a similar path: from wealth accumulation to philanthropy to politics. The Lowells, whom Restoration News cited in the past piece, started The Atlantic Magazine, owned today by Steve Jobs’s widow and a major power player in Washington. The Forbes, another family Restoration News cited, used their prestige for political power, and today their scion is John Forbes Kerry. The Tangs are no exception. In their case, their vehicle is the Committee of 100, co-founded by Oscar 35 years ago: a collection of extremely prominent Chinese Americans who push for closer ties between America and China.
Projects like the Committee, gauzy-sounding propositions by big-name players which command attention in elite circles, rise or fall based on the causes they choose to support. Examining the Committee’s agenda shows that, in every major inflection point in the U.S.-China relationship, it takes positions that strengthen the authority of the Chinese Communist regime—using the justifications of fighting anti-Asian racism and promoting education.
(READ PART 1 OF THIS REPORT: Charity As Infiltration: The Tang Family and the Committee of 100)
What the Committee Doesn’t Emphasize…
Over and over the past few years, the Committee has stood out for what it doesn’t emphasize about China: consistently, it seems to miss the opportunity to take obvious political positions that work to the benefit of America in deference to taking a pro-China stand. Though the Committee’s website, interestingly, is hard for a non-member to read (it has many headings; underneath which are sub-headings; underneath which are sub-sub-headings which lead to lists) certain glaring absences show through.
The obvious topic for the Committee to address—particularly since it’s co-founded by a Chinese-American like Oscar Tang with deep family ties to Hong Kong—is the erosion of self-rule there at the hands of the CCP. There has been nothing secret about this progression, culminating but not ending in the mass crackdown on civil liberties in 2020. This would seem especially pressing for the Committee since another longtime member, the celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma, lent his worldwide prestige to the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997; a handover executed on the understanding that basic legal freedoms would continue under the new regime. But, in 2020, not one of the Committee’s 18 events addressed Hong Kong.
Nor did the Committee speak out about the other obvious recent issue regarding America’s relationship to China: the CCP’s complicity in the release of COVID to an unsuspecting world. Instead, the Committee sponsored a teleconference series on Covid in 2020: Strategic Lessons from Within China For Responding to Covid-19. Since the Chinese “strategy” was locking down massive residential towers for months at a time, it’s not clear what kind of lessons America can draw that are compatible with our civil liberties.
Finally, the Committee has been silent as CCP-backed companies have executed a slow-motion infiltration of New York City, which is the Committee’s headquarters. This infiltration includes buying the Waldorf-Astoria, where the American Ambassador to the U.N.’s residence was located before the sale. It also includes the Empire State Building partnering with Delos, a “wellness” company backed by the Chinese Communist Party, to supply technical support for the building. Delos, too, has been allowed into Yankee Stadium thanks to the largesse of the city of New York, which helps fund the Tangs’ favorite philanthropy, the New York Historical Society; and into the same public schools where the Historical Society spreads its lessons.
…What It’s Never Emphasized…
But ignoring obvious issues with China in favor of a pro-engagement policy with China is an approach that’s been integral to the Committee since its founding. Indeed, it was in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the most perilous moment in US-China relations until the present, that Oscar Tang co-founded the Committee. The Committee’s stated goal was not to promote freedom in China nor to cast doubt on Deng Xiaoping’s promise that government-backed capitalism would lead to political freedom. It was to strengthen ties between America and China, in other words to strengthen ties with the CCP, in the face of “murmurs and threats in Washington, D.C. from legislators that diplomatic relations should be severed.” Not surprisingly, the foundation of the Committee was encouraged by Henry Kissinger: famously the “opener” of the west to China in the 1970s and, in the wake of Tiananmen, one of Deng Xiaoping’s foremost apologists.
Most members of the Committee “had close ties in China or Taiwan, a few at the highest levels, and some were involved politically in the United States.” During the next ten years, “a time when there was much less contact between Americans and Chinese at all levels,” the Committee’s connections allowed it to undertake “multiple triangulation between Washington, Taipei and Beijing, at those levels, at that kind of intimacy.” One of its moves was attending the Hong Kong handover to China by the British at which founding member Yo-Yo Ma performed. According to Committee members, in a retrospective, “This culminated a two-year C-100 campaign in the U.S. to help the American public understand the historical and political context of Hong Kong’s change in government.”
Through efforts like these, the Committee played its part pushing Washington towards a policy which not only overlooked the Tiananmen slaughter, but, over the next thirty years, allowed the CCP to outsource American labor and enter American universities and real estate—all under the fiction that a modernized economy meant an eventual democracy. We now know this to be the last thing from the truth. Indeed, in retrospect, from Hong Kong to Beijing, the Committee has paved the way for American acceptance of more autocracy.
…And What it Does Emphasize
Yet, today, this strengthening of Chinese-American ties seems to remain the Committee’s main focus, even at the expense of America’s security.
It recently announced its opposition to House Resolution 3334 which requires the president to “impose visa- and property-blocking sanctions on any member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee whom the President determines plays a significant role in developing or implementing policies that (1) violate the autonomy of Hong Kong; (2) harass or intimidate the people of Taiwan; or (3) contribute to the oppression of individuals or groups in China, including Uyghur Muslims.”
The Committee and an allied organization compare this Act to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers entry into the United States. It takes a similar stand on the proposed Stop CCP Visas Act, which would “block Chinese citizens from from getting any of three main types of student visas issued by the U.S.”
On its website, the Committee also devotes a special section to listing and opposing all state and national bills “prohibiting property ownership by citizens of foreign countries.” It argues that this push to protect American land “legitimizes harmful and xenophobic claims about immigrants that exacerbate anti-Asian violence that has negatively affected U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike. This legislation also disproportionately affects a wide range of people of color living in the United States; most of the countries targeted in this legislation are majority non-white.”
Additionally, the Committee sponsors the “AAPI (American Asian Pacific Islander) Hate Tracker:”
A place where you can easily report incidents and connect to organizations to receive support. This is a collaborative project created by Committee of 100 and The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), and supported by TAAF's NYC Anti-Hate Collaborative, a collective of trusted New York based Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) serving nonprofit organizations.
More concerning because more insidious is the Committee’s Memo on “Diplomatic Language." This memo, five pages long, prohibits “reframing differences [with China] as evidence of an existential threat.” It also prohibits language suggesting “ideological and irreconcilable differences prevalent during the Cold War.” It calls these arguments “fearmongering rhetoric” which “encourages anti-Asian hate and suspicion by supporting the perpetual foreigner and yellow peril stereotypes.” Other examples it gives of this “fearmongering” rhetoric include arguing that, “predatory, imperial powers like China will hold countries in Latin America and Africa hostage without strong international institutions to protect their sovereignty against a country that seeks only to benefit its own power.”
Agree or not with these ideas, they are arguments, not ad hominems. They are based in the fact of China’s predatory and expansive relationships with countries ranging from Saudi Arabia to those in South America, including through its Belt and Road Initiative, which The New York Times described eighteen months ago as part of China’s attempt to “expand its influence” at the expense of the United States and other “democracies.” Trying to prohibit arguments like this in the name of combating stereotypes is not just suppressing speech. It is also reinforcing the real human rights abuses against people of color abroad that the Committee of 100 claims, in other contexts, to condemn.
Finally, the Committee is busy in America’s schools. In 2023, the Committee advocated for Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI)’s National Teaching Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander History Act. This Act, judging by comments of Committee members, places special focus on “hardship, racism, and xenophobia,” for which the Committee “trained over 3,000 teachers and developed 70 lesson plans for K-12 grades.” None of this advocacy shows America as a constitutional republic shaped by associations of it citizens. It shows America as a place where these citizens were responsible for xenophobia and hatred. It also ignores the fact that, in each case of discrimination, American citizens weren’t the root cause. Indeed, the federal government was responsible for either the underlying policy that created the conditions for discrimination; or the discriminatory policy itself.
The Committee’s Ideology…
Powerful donors have always used their philanthropy to mold the country’s view of itself. So, what kind of message are the Tangs and the Committee of 100 trying to send?
The obvious part of their message is that Americans who oppose the promotion of cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party means being guilty of racism and xenophobia. The quieter part of this message, the one that supports allegations of racism and xenophobia, is that America is a colorblind nation where, minus prejudice, anyone can succeed. In this schema, anyone questioning the loyalties or actions of those who have succeeded, like the Tangs and their allies, are acting off of lower motives, and are anti-merit.
But, in the case of Oscar Tang and at least one other founding member of the Committee of 100, it was their elite family connections in China and America that helped create the conditions for their success.. Tellingly, they were also aided by very specific policies in America. As Restoration News has reported, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 broke from American experience of 200 years. It emphasized world-wide immigration by high-skilled workers from many different countries in small numbers: people with little experience of America outside large government-backed institutions like tech companies and universities.
This multicultural, bipartisan cohort, including the Tangs, has nothing to do with the history of American immigrants before 1960, or African Americans or indigenous Americans, however much, as Restoration News reported in its past report, Agnes Hsu-Tang wants to link them. It’s an international elite come to America. Some of its members, like the federal judges Restoration News reported on recently, are stopping a duly elected Republican president from delivering on his agenda. Others, like the Tangs, are using institutions and speech codes to silence dissent even as they work to build connections with other foreign elites, including leaders of our most powerful rival.
…and How to Stop It
These powerful operators are, of course, free to use their money and connections to try to proselytize in any way they wish—but Americans don’t need to grant them the credence of listening. One way to push back is in schools—to make sure that, like trauma creep, the Committee’s DEI programs don’t succeed in rewriting American history. The second is to pass laws requiring the Committee and its members to register as foreign lobbyists, so it can be monitored accordingly.
The third is to scrutinize the influence of cultural philanthropies like museums and orchestras which are the foundations for the influence of operators like the Tangs. This means opening up the possibility of limiting tax deductions for donations to them as well as diminishing federal and state support for their work. These institutions, as Restoration News has shown, often work to the benefit of institutional elites with foreign links, becoming clearinghouses for suspect agendas. Those elites and their links need to be scrutinized, along with the projects of the institutions they fund.