Vijay Prashad, the self-described Marxist who directs Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, holds a "senior non-resident fellow" position at a Chinese Communist Party-connected think tank whose leadership is steeped in Beijing's United Front apparatus, Just the News reported.
The think tank is the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China. Both People's Dispatch and Renmin University's own "experts" page list Prashad in the fellowship role. The institute's dean, Wang Wen, is a CCP member and a leader within multiple organizations tied to Beijing's United Front Work Department, the party organ Xi Jinping has called "an important magic weapon for the party to defeat the enemy."
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., flagged the connection in a February letter sent directly to Prashad. Smith's letter noted the fellowship and leveled a broader charge at Tricontinental, the organization Prashad runs and whose advisory board is chaired by Shanghai-based tech mogul Neville Roy Singham.
In his letter, the chairman wrote:
"Since its founding in 2017, Tricontinental has been responsible for spreading Marxist and anti-American rhetoric across both the United States and the globe. Reports indicate that Tricontinental, and individuals connected to it, have been responsible for sowing chaos and spreading Chinese propaganda, possibly in coordination with a foreign government."
Prashad has denied foreign government involvement. He told the New York Times in 2023 that "we do not and have never received funds or instructions from any government or political party." But the web of institutional affiliations around Prashad and the Chongyang Institute tells a more complicated story than a simple denial can settle.
The Mercator Institute for China Studies, a respected European research body, has labeled the Chongyang Institute as among the CCP's "domestic preachers" and classified it as a "semi-official" think tank. That designation matters. It places the institute not in the category of independent academic research but in the orbit of party-directed messaging.
Wang Wen, the Chongyang Institute's dean, sits at the center of the institutional overlap. As of 2019, he was listed on the official website for the Western Returned Scholars Association. The chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP has described that association as "an organization subordinate to the United Front Work Department." The International Department of the Central Committee of the CCP itself has stated the association "is a united front-oriented mass organization led by the Communist Party of China."
In 2023, the Chongyang Institute noted that Wang Wen was added as an association council member. His response to the appointment was revealing. Wang said:
"Being added to the board of directors makes me feel an even greater responsibility. As a scholar from a Chinese think tank, one of my important tasks over the past few years has been telling China's story to the world. Today, China is increasingly moving to the center of the world stage. The world needs to understand China, and China needs the world's understanding. We need to work together to tell China's story well, which is also an effective way of international communication."
"Telling China's story to the world" is a phrase that carries specific weight in the CCP's lexicon. It is the language of state-directed narrative management, not independent scholarship.
Wang Wen's activities extend further. In 2021, Renmin University's School of Global Leadership touted his invitation to an Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region CPPCC policy briefing, where he delivered a keynote speech. The Congressional Research Service stated that same year that the Chinese state constitution defines the CPPCC as "a broadly based representative organization of the united front." The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has assessed that the United Front Work Department "follows the direction of China's broader United Front strategy set forth by the CPPCC."
In 2024, Northeast Petroleum University reported that a lecture series organized by the United Front Work Department of the Party Committee featured a lecture by Wang Wen. And in August 2022, he penned a piece for the Journal of the Central Institute of Socialism, an entity the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes as "a political institute of the United Front" whose journal "publishes materials on United Front theory."
The pattern is not subtle. Wang Wen operates across a constellation of CCP-aligned United Front bodies while running the think tank where Prashad holds his fellowship. The broader pattern of wealthy Marxist financiers working alongside CCP institutions to shape global narratives has drawn increasing scrutiny from Congress and national security analysts alike.
Prashad's ties to Neville Roy Singham are long-standing and openly acknowledged. In 2021, Prashad referred to Singham as "one of my oldest & dearest friends" and described him as "a Marxist with a massive software company." Prashad wrote that Singham "sold that company a few years ago and decided to give away all the money toward political education for a new generation of radicals."
The funds from that sale, the sale of Thoughtworks, "were the original source for [Tricontinental's] endowment, & other projects, which we hope will last for at least a generation," Prashad stated.
Prashad's personal branding leaves little ambiguity about his ideological commitments. He has written: "Writing is my joy, revolution is my passion." His tagline promises readers will "read about red books, elegant cricket, and class struggle."
Singham, who resides in Shanghai, chairs Tricontinental's advisory board. In October 2024, the Chongyang Institute republished an article co-written by Singham and fellow Chongyang Institute senior fellow John Ross, titled "Big data from 210 economies reveals the secrets to global and Chinese economic growth." That the CCP-linked think tank would amplify work by the man bankrolling Prashad's organization is worth noting.
The connections between Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans and the broader network add another layer. Singham and Evans married, and Prashad gave a lecture on "The Future of the Left" during the wedding weekend festivities. Singham and Evans did not respond to requests for comment sent through the Code Pink leader. Prashad, Ross, and the Chongyang Institute also did not respond to requests for comment.
In July 2020, a statement from the "No Cold War" movement argued that "a New Cold War against China is against the interests of humanity." Signatories included Prashad, Ross, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, Brian Becker, leader of the ANSWER Coalition and a founder of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Zhang Weiwei, a leader at the China Academy.
Global Times, the CCP-controlled tabloid, promptly promoted the effort, writing that "diplomats and scholars from 48 countries gathered Saturday for an online event." By August 2020, the Chongyang Institute itself touted the role Prashad played in promoting the "No Cold War" campaign.
The amplification of American activist campaigns by Chinese state media has become a recurring pattern, one that raises serious questions about whether these efforts serve genuine anti-war sentiment or function as useful content for Beijing's propaganda apparatus.
More recently, China Diplomacy reported that the Chongyang Institute "hosted a high-level dialogue between Chinese and Indian scholars" on "The New Global South in the Trump 2.0 Era," with Prashad and Wang Wen as the main speakers. The pairing of a self-identified American Marxist with a CCP-affiliated United Front figure at a party-linked think tank tells its own story.
The institutional setting matters. Renmin University of China, the Chongyang Institute's home, maintains a dedicated webpage on the "United Front Window of Renmin University of China," sponsored by the United Front Work Department of the CPC Committee of Renmin University. The university is not merely adjacent to the party's influence operations. It houses them openly.
Chongyang Institute board member Zhuang Yumin, who also serves as executive director and a dean of the institute as well as dean of the school of finance at Renmin University, is listed as a prior deputy to the National People's Congress and a Beijing-based member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. The institute's leadership is saturated with CCP institutional ties.
Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Sobolik, a China expert, assessed the situation plainly in comments to Just the News:
"These activities and associations are hallmarks of united front entities, and increase the already significant concerns about the Singham Network."
Jamestown Foundation president Peter Mattis has testified to Congress that the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs is "affiliated with multiple united front officials." The broader ecosystem in which the Chongyang Institute operates fits that same description.
Questions about foreign influence and transparency have dogged multiple figures in American public life in recent years. But the Prashad-Chongyang connection stands out because the institutional trail is so thoroughly documented, by the CCP's own websites, by the think tank's own publications, and by the university's own "experts" page.
What remains unclear is the precise scope of Prashad's engagement with the Chongyang Institute. The exact start and end dates of his fellowship are not public. The full text of Smith's February letter has not been released in its entirety. And the article's reference to Wang Wen's direct work with the Chinese government trails off without full detail.
Prashad's 2023 denial to the New York Times, that Tricontinental has never received funds or instructions from any government, has not been independently verified or refuted. But the denial sits uneasily alongside a fellowship at a think tank whose dean operates across CCP United Front bodies, whose board members hold positions in the National People's Congress and the CPPCC, and whose parent university openly houses a United Front Work Department operation.
The growing body of cases involving Americans entangled with CCP-linked entities has made one thing clear: institutional connections of this density do not happen by accident, and they do not sustain themselves without serving someone's interests.
When a man who calls revolution his passion holds a fellowship at a think tank run by a CCP United Front operative, the question isn't whether it looks bad. The question is who benefits, and it isn't the American public.
