Janelle Stelson, the Democratic candidate challenging Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District, has taken thousands of dollars from her own uncle, a New York businessman who spent his career cultivating ties to CCP-connected officials and urging the U.S. to "join forces" with Beijing.
John W. Allen contributed $8,250 across Stelson's two congressional bids, Federal Election Commission records show. He maxed out his donations during her failed 2024 campaign and kicked in another $1,150 for her current 2026 run. Stelson appears to be the only federal candidate Allen has ever backed financially, a striking detail given the breadth of his professional life in China-adjacent business and nonprofit circles.
The family connection is documented in a 1996 Washington Post obituary for Bertha Wilson Allen, Stelson's grandmother, which lists two surviving children: Judith Allen Stelson of Stafford, Virginia, the candidate's mother, and John Wilson Allen of New York. A Washington Free Beacon review traced Allen's career through corporate filings, archived websites, SEC records, and CCP state media interviews, assembling a portrait of a man who built his professional identity around facilitating American engagement with Chinese government-linked entities.
Neither Stelson nor Allen responded to requests for comment.
Allen served for more than a decade as CEO of Greater China Corporation, a New York-based investment firm. An archived version of the company's website states that Greater China Corporation "utilizes its significant relationships in the U.S., China and around the world to assist its partners to benefit from China's prosperity."
The firm's end was not voluntary. The Securities and Exchange Commission revoked Greater China Corporation's securities registration in 2008 after the company failed to file required reports dating back to September 1998, nearly a full decade of non-compliance. The website is now defunct.
Allen is also listed as an adviser at ChinaWise USA, a Chicago-based firm whose stated purpose is "to help North American and Chinese enterprises conduct business with each other." His staff biography on that site notes another credential: he served as a trustee of George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the network that has bankrolled liberal causes across the country, including spending more than $40 million to elect progressive prosecutors in half of America's largest jurisdictions.
Allen and Soros also served together as trustees of the International Science Foundation, a two-year Soros project that funded research labs in former Soviet states.
Allen's connections to Chinese government figures stretch back at least two decades. In 2004, he attended a Chinese Cultural Foundation event held inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The event was co-hosted by CITIC Industrial Bank, which is owned by China's Ministry of Finance. Photos from the event show Allen alongside a Chinese ambassador.
Two years later, in 2006, Allen was pictured with Cheng Siwei, then vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, one of the most powerful legislative bodies in the Chinese government.
By 2019, Allen was giving interviews to Xinhua News Agency, the CCP's official state media arm. Reporters Without Borders has described Xinhua as "the world's biggest propaganda agency" and said it sits "at the heart of censorship and disinformation put in place by the communist party."
In a November 4, 2019 interview with Xinhua, Allen called on the United States and China to "stick to multilateralism" and delivered a line that reads like a CCP talking point:
"Let's join forces and combat the threats and challenges we are commonly facing."
Allen also "spoke highly of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative" during those interviews, Xinhua reported. The Belt and Road Initiative is Beijing's sprawling global infrastructure program, which U.S. national security officials across administrations have warned serves as a vehicle for expanding Chinese economic and strategic influence worldwide. Allen gave a second Xinhua interview on November 27, 2019.
Elizabeth Wang, president of the Chinese Cultural Foundation, told the Free Beacon that Allen has "long been retired" from the group. She added that "political contributions he may make are entirely personal and do not represent or reflect CCF's views, activities, or mission." Wang said Allen once mentioned "he had a relative who was running for Congress," but she "did not catch the person's name."
Allen is not the only donor in Stelson's orbit with direct CCP connections. FEC records show that Pin Ni, an auto executive living in the United States, contributed $8,500 to Stelson's campaign in the current 2026 cycle. Corporate disclosures identify Ni as a "comrade" of the CCP, a designation that denotes party membership.
Ni serves as a top executive at Wanxiang America, an automotive parts manufacturer, and at KARMA Automotive, a luxury electric vehicle maker. Both are subsidiaries of the China-based Wanxiang Group, a billion-dollar green energy conglomerate. Wanxiang Group's own corporate materials state that the company "listens to the Party, follows the Party's lead, holds high the banner, and prioritizes Party building." That is not ambiguous language. It is a declaration of allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party.
The pattern of CCP-linked money flowing into Democratic campaigns is not unique to Stelson. Congressional investigators have been pursuing subpoenas targeting nonprofits tied to China-linked megadonors, and other prominent Democrats have faced scrutiny for accepting money from executives at companies the Pentagon has flagged as Chinese military firms.
FEC filings raise another question about Allen's financial support for his niece. After maxing out his contributions to Stelson's 2024 campaign, Allen made an additional $500 donation that appears to have pushed him over the legal contribution limit for that cycle. The Free Beacon report does not indicate whether the FEC has taken any enforcement action regarding the apparent overage.
Stelson, a former local news anchor, lost her 2024 race against Perry, a campaign the Free Beacon described as "doomed." She is now running again in the same district. The question voters in central Pennsylvania deserve an answer to is straightforward: did Stelson know about her uncle's decades of CCP-adjacent business dealings and state media appearances when she accepted his money? And does she see any problem with taking $8,500 from a man corporate records identify as a CCP member?
She has not said. Broader questions about Beijing-linked influence in American politics continue to mount. California's governor accepted $50,000 from an executive of a company the Pentagon designated a Chinese military firm. House investigators have subpoenaed nonprofits over tens of millions of dollars tied to a Shanghai-based tech tycoon. The money keeps arriving, and the candidates who take it keep declining to explain why.
Voters can draw their own conclusions when a candidate's top donor spent years urging America to "join forces" with the regime in Beijing, and the candidate won't even answer the phone.
