A former prime aide in New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul’s workplace is the daughter of a former Chinese language journalist whose archived biography says he labored for the Chinese language Communist Celebration’s (CCP) “Education Department of the News Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department” as a deputy director and served in a number of management roles at state-run media shops, a Fox Information Digital investigation discovered.
Fan Xiaojiang, or Elaine, is at the moment serving because the chief of employees for Democrat Scott Stringer’s mayoral marketing campaign and has been concerned in Democrat politics in New York for greater than a decade, together with serving as Hochul’s director of Asian affairs between October 2021 and November 2023, in accordance with her Linkedin profile.
The newest marketing campaign finance submitting reveals that she has been paid greater than $120,000 by the Stringer marketing campaign since final August. Stringer’s marketing campaign declined to remark for this story.
Fan, who’s initially from Beijing, was acknowledged by the Metropolis College of Hong Kong’s Centre for Communication Analysis in a 2021 press launch selling her function within the Hochul administration. The press launch known as her an “alumnus” and boasted about her being “one of the very few Asian-American leaders who hold a senior position in the state’s government.”
The press launch went on to cite professor Jonathan Zhu, a former supervisor, who stated that “Elaine is the third generation of a journalist’s family in China, with her grandfather and father each playing a distinguished role in the respective eras of the nation’s history.”
Fox Information Digital can now completely verify that this press launch was referring to Fan Dongsheng, her father, and Fan Changjiang, her late grandfather.
When reached for touch upon whether or not Elaine’s father influenced her to enter the media, Zhu confirmed to Fox Information Digital that Dongsheng was her father and stated, “Although I have never eyewitnessed what Fan Dongsheng told his daughter about career choice, his influence on her is obvious and imaginable.”
He went on to say that Dongsheng visited the college that his daughter attended a “few times, including a talk to our faculty members and graduate students on his experience in launching and operating Huasheng Monthly, one of the earliest online news websites in China.”
Previous to leaping into state authorities in 2014 because the “Queens Borough Director & Citywide Asian American Affairs” for Stringer’s comptroller workplace, Elaine was the “Chief Reporter” for Ming Pao Each day Information for nearly a decade between 2005 and 2015, in accordance with her Linkedin profile.
A number of years earlier than she joined the media outlet, the Jamestown Basis, a nonpartisan protection coverage suppose tank, sounded the alarm concerning the media outlet being “heavily influenced” by the Chinese language authorities and revealed that sources instructed them that the Chinese language Consulate in New York was their “true boss.”
This might not be the primary time that somebody from the Fan household would work for a media outlet influenced by the Chinese language authorities. Fan’s father served because the president and editorial director of China Press, or Qiaobao, in New York between 1999 and 2005, in accordance with a number of archived on-line bios.
China Press was not solely designated by the State Division throughout President Donald Trump’s first time period as “state-backed propaganda” and a “foreign mission,” however the Hoover Establishment additionally sounded the alarm, saying in a 2020 report that the “state-owned China News Service and the Overseas Chinese Office of the State Council dispatched editorial personnel to the United States” to discovered Qiaobao.
The elder Fan additionally served because the “director of the Special Editorial Department of the Chinese News Agency,” which now refers back to the Xinhua Information Company, a prime state-run propaganda outlet, in accordance with the Hoover Establishment. A number of bios stated he was additionally the deputy director of the “Education Department of the News Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department.”
In response to a Chinese language authorities web site reviewed by Fox Information Digital, the CPD is the “organization primarily responsible for monitoring content to ensure that China’s publishers, in particular its news publishers, do not print anything that is inconsistent with the Communist Party’s political dogma.”
After leaving state-owned media, Dongsheng held a number of management roles on the Cheung Kong College of Journalism and Communication at Shantou College, a Chinese language college that has sections on their web site that promote the CCP “Party Building Work” and hosted a themed life assembly a couple of years in the past on “Strive like an outstanding Communist Party member.”
The editor of China Transient on the Jamestown Basis expressed deep considerations when Fox Information Digital reached out about Fan’s familial ties to the CCP, saying she “comes from an illustrious family of CCP journalists.”
“Her grandfather was one of the more prominent propagandists of the CCP’s struggles from the 1930s onwards, while her father worked for a range of party publications managed under the central propaganda department in Beijing,” Arran Hope instructed Fox Information Digital. “This included a stint in the United States, where her daughter now works as chief of staff to mayoral candidate Scott Stringer, following a stint as a reporter for another party outlet here. Fan has not distanced herself from her family legacy, quite the opposite. In 2017, for example, she delivered a speech at a journalism school in the PRC (People’s Republic of China) named in her grandfather’s honor.”
“More concerning for New York City’s voters, she appears to be actively involved in the party’s United Front system, which seeks to promote the party’s preferences and control both within and without the PRC. She has given speeches at events organized by the PRC Consulate in New York that celebrate United Front organizations in the city,” he continued. “These events call for promoting reunification with Taiwan as well as advocating for the ‘motherland’ and its interests. To have somebody whom PRC diplomats clearly view favorably in such a senior role in New York politics should be cause for concern.”
Elaine Fan’s late grandfather joined the Chinese language Communist Celebration in 1939 and had management roles at a number of state-owned media shops, together with because the editor-in-chief of the Xinhua Information Company, deputy director of the Basic Administration of Data and president of the Folks’s Each day Information Company, in accordance with a number of bios on Baidu. Along with her father and grandfather, Fan’s uncle, Fan Xiaojian, joined the CCP in 1976 and has held a number of roles within the CCP, together with because the chief economist and director of the finance division of the ministry of agriculture between 1998 and 2000.
He was additionally a delegate to the seventeenth Nationwide Congress of the Communist Celebration of China and was a member of the eleventh Nationwide Committee of the Chinese language Folks’s Political Consultative Convention, which Fox Information Digital beforehand reported was “designed to liaise with non-Communist Party members – and ultimately see them work with the CCP to advance its interests,” in accordance with a 2021 report from The Diplomat.
Throughout her tenure within the Hochul administration, Elaine attended a number of occasions hosted by the Chinese language Consulate in New York Metropolis and a number of teams that make up China’s United Entrance, which works to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling,” in accordance with a U.S.-China Financial and Safety Evaluate Fee report.
Elaine was a visitor of honor at an occasion final September on the consulate in New York Metropolis to have fun the twenty seventh anniversary of the U.S.-Fujian Western Abroad Chinese language Affiliation, which is a United Entrance group, in accordance with the Chinese language authorities.
She additionally attended an occasion known as “An Evening of Chinese Culture” hosted by the New York Mets and Sino-American Friendship Affiliation in 2023, which obtained backlash. In response to an August 2022 op-ed from the Washington Submit’s deputy opinion editor, “China experts have identified” SAFA as “being involved in United Front work – a global effort to propagandize on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.”
In 2021, Hochul gave a shout-out to Fan whereas asserting that Chinatown was a $20 Million New York Metropolis area winner for revitalization, saying she “forgot to mention Elaine Fan is now my Director of Asian Affairs.” She then instructed the gang to “Make sure you get to know Elaine Fan as well.”
Hudson Institute Fellow Michael Sobolik spoke to Fox Information Digital concerning the totality of Fan’s hyperlinks to the CCP, saying, “This isn’t complicated.”
“If Elaine Fan ever worked for CCP-controlled state media, she shouldn’t be welcome in U.S. electoral politics. If Scott Stringer lacks discernment to insulate a campaign from potential vectors of CCP influence, how can he protect New York City from that malign influence in public office?”
In September 2023, Chinese language Consul Basic Huang Ping in New York hosted a reception on the consulate to have fun the 74th anniversary of the founding of the Folks’s Republic of China, which included a number of officers, together with Fan, who delivered remarks on the reception.
Hochul’s ties to Elaine Fan aren’t the primary time that her workplace has confronted scrutiny over considerations about CCP affect. Hochul confronted backlash final 12 months after it was revealed that her former deputy chief of employees, Linda Solar, was indicted on fees of “violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy,” in accordance with a Division of Justice press launch in September.
Solar’s attorneys have repeatedly denied the fees, however the indictment revealed some damning communications between Solar and Huang Ping, who left his function because the consul basic of the New York Metropolis Chinese language consulate weeks after the indictment towards Solar was introduced.
Fox Information Digital has extensively reported on Ping, who was noticed making visits to prime universities, talking with elected officers and carousing with prime media shops regardless of his lengthy historical past of pushing CCP narratives and publicly denying human rights violations towards China’s Uyghur inhabitants. The unsealed indictment revealed {that a} speechwriter for then-Lt. Gov. Hochul needed to say the “Uyghur situation” in China for her 2021 Lunar New 12 months message, however the plight of the minority group being persecuted by the Chinese language authorities was in the end omitted after Solar overruled the speechwriter.
The indictment says Solar revealed to Ping what the speechwriter needed to incorporate however insisted that she wouldn’t let her boss point out Uyghurs after admitting that she was “starting to lose her temper” with the speechwriter. Ping appeared to chalk up the speechwriter’s suggestion as a clueless American who had by no means visited China and that U.S.-China relations may “sour” due to “people like the speechwriter,” the indictment stated, prompting Solar to concur that the speechwriter had by no means visited China. Ping would go on to put up Hochul’s Lunar New 12 months message days in a while his Fb web page, which didn’t point out Uyghurs.
Fox Information Digital reached out to Fan and Hochul’s workplace however didn’t obtain a response.
