- Singham was tied to pro-China influence campaign by the New York Times
- He is reportedly a major backer of left-wing groups Code Pink and No Cold War
- Singham shares an office in Shanghai with an apparent Chinses propaganda firm
An American tech millionaire who is a major supporter of left-wing causes in the US and Britain has been named as the central figure in a globe-spanning network of pro-China propaganda.
Neville Roy Singham, 69, runs a ‘lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda’ around the world, according to a New York Times investigation published Saturday.
The report identified Singham, an avowed socialist, as a major backer of trans-Atlantic activist collective No Cold War as well as Code Pink, the US anti-war group that once criticized China’s rights abuses, but now parrots Chinese Communist Party talking points.
Singham’s millions in funding, funneled through non-descript US non-profits, also back a liberal think-tank in Massachusetts, a political party in South Africa, and news organizations in India and Brazil, according to the report.
The groups in the network often appear to blend traditional progressive concerns, such as climate change and racial justice, with strident pro-China talking points, including defending the detention of ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and bashing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
According to the Times, the groups often share staff and offices, promote each others’ social media content, and interview one another’s representatives without disclosing their ties.
Singham, who lives in Shanghai, shares an office there with a Chinese media company called Maku Group, which appears to be dedicated to producing foreign propaganda.
In a statement to the Times, Singham said: ‘I categorically deny and repudiate any suggestion that I am a member of, work for, take orders from, or follow instructions of any political party or government or their representatives.’
‘I am solely guided by my beliefs, which are my long-held personal views,’ he added.
The son of leftist academic Archibald Singham, Neville Roy Singham made his millions from ThoughtWorks, the software company he founded in Chicago in the late 1980s.
In 2017, he married Jodie Evans, a former Democratic political adviser and the co-founder of Code Pink, the anti-war group founded in 2002 to oppose the US invasion of Iraq.
Six months after his wedding, he sold ThoughtWorks to a private equity firm for $785 million, according to the Times.
Since then, Code Pink has received about $1.4 million in donations from groups linked to Singham, according to the Times, accounting for about a quarter of the group’s donations.
Evans, once a critic of China’s authoritarian ruling Communist Party, has changed her tune.
She now vocally supports China, branding the ethnic minority Uyghurs as terrorists and supporting their detention in one 2021 video.
In February, Code Pink activists disrupted a House a hearing of a special House committee dedicated to countering threats from China.
One activist held up a sign that read ‘China is not our enemy,’ while another held up a similar hand-drawn sign that said ‘Stop Asian Hate,’ a slogan that first arose to protest racist violence against Asian Americans.
Code Pink did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Saturday.
Evans told the Times that Code Pink had never taken money from any government, saying: ‘I deny your suggestion that I follow the direction of any political party, my husband or any other government or their representatives.’
‘I have always followed my values,’ she added.
