THE SHANGHAI CONNECTION: HOW CHINA CULTIVATED NYC MAYOR’S POLITICAL BASE
Leaked Minutes Show Democratic Socialists Building CCP Ties—With Cash-Fueled Coaching
Newsweek published leaked meeting minutes Monday that should make every New York voter nervous. Internal documents spanning 2021 to August 2025 show members of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America cultivating direct relationships with Chinese Communist Party officials—complete with trips to Party schools, carefully crafted itineraries designed to “interface” with Beijing, and strategic messaging advice from activists funded by a Shanghai-based tech millionaire.
The money trail tells the story. Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans appears throughout the minutes, briefing DSA members on how to talk about China. Her June 2023 advice: “Stay out of the weeds. Focus on points that are easier to sell.” One DSA member praised this approach explicitly: “They don’t get caught up in One China or Xinjiang or Hong Kong. It’s good rhetorically.”
Evans knows her funders. Since marrying tech millionaire Neville Roy Singham in 2017, Code Pink shifted from criticizing China’s human rights record to defending it. The New York Times and congressional investigators documented that Singham—who now operates from Shanghai—has channeled at least $275 million through nonprofits to groups that “mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.”
Code Pink received over $1.4 million from Singham-linked sources between 2017 and 2022, representing about 25 percent of its total funding. Before 2017, Evans tweeted demands that China “stop brutal repression of their women’s human rights defenders.” After 2017, she described China as “a defender of the oppressed and a model for economic growth without slavery or war.”
That’s not ideology. That’s a paycheck talking.
The People’s Forum—a Manhattan event space that hosts DSA meetings—received over $20.4 million from Singham between 2017 and 2022. The Forum co-sponsored a September 2021 event titled “China and the Left: A Socialist Forum” featuring Code Pink and Qiao Collective, a diaspora Chinese group that amplifies Beijing narratives. DSA International Committee members attended. The meeting minutes reference these connections repeatedly, discussing strategy sessions with Code Pink and coordination with Friends of Socialist China, a Britain-based group that lists DSA committee members on its advisory board.
The August 2025 Guizhou trip shows how the operation works. DSA members visited the Communist Party School there, hosted by CCP officials and the provincial foreign affairs department. Party officials encouraged them to establish “official exchanges.” The visitors attended seminars on poverty alleviation programs that critics describe as surveillance mechanisms. One slideshow photo shows a mechanical cotton harvester in Xinjiang with the parenthetical caption: “(No slaves!!)”
That’s propaganda laundering through activist tourism.
The minutes also document a 2023 Xinjiang visit designed to counter UN human rights experts who’ve described China’s detention network as brutalization camps. One slideshow photo shows a Uyghur woman with the caption: “Our visit to Xinjiang was very revealing! A young woman we met in the Bazaar spoke near-perfect English. She told us she learned it in a training school.” Another image of Id Kah Mosque notes worshippers “come and go freely.”
These aren’t independent observations. They’re Beijing’s script.
Meeting minutes from October 2025 show the explicit goal: “China wants to interface with the DSA. If we develop a killer two-week itinerary, hire locals, and develop further connections with the CPC, then we’re golden.”
Not everyone bought it. One DSA member whose name was redacted pushed back: “Saying we can’t talk about their rights until we defeat American imperialism doesn’t work for me.” That member was told their approach was “unkind” and urged to “have conversation that encourages debate.” They apologized.
That’s how influence operations work—not through direct control but through social pressure wrapped in anti-imperialist rhetoric.
The 2021 minutes show members dismissing Uyghur genocide claims: “There are real problems with the Chinese government, but we are not going to stop what the Chinese are doing as DSA. We have to confront the propaganda campaign by U.S. media and even the left. For instance, one million Uyghurs being brutalized in Xinjiang is an exaggeration. It’s not a genocide or Holocaust.”
This matters because DSA isn’t fringe anymore. The organization played a central role in Mamdani’s stunning November 2025 mayoral victory. NYC-DSA’s website describes itself as “Zohran’s political home” and credits his win directly to their grassroots organizing. Mamdani took office January 1, 2026, as the nation’s biggest city’s first Muslim mayor. While Mamdani himself never appeared in the leaked meeting minutes and has distanced himself from elements of DSA’s national platform, the organization that powered his campaign spent years building institutional ties to Chinese Communist Party officials.
The regulatory gap here is significant. Foreign Agents Registration Act requirements only trigger when someone acts under the “direction or control” of a foreign principal. Influence operations that work through ideological alignment and financial intermediaries can operate outside FARA’s scope. Senators Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley have called for investigations into whether Code Pink and The People’s Forum should register under FARA, but proving legal threshold is difficult when money flows through donor-advised funds and the relationship operates through shared ideology.
Beijing understands the long game. Cultivating relationships with rising political movements is strategic investment. DSA membership peaked at 92,000 in 2021 and stood at 64,000 in October 2024. The organization has endorsed dozens of candidates for Congress and state legislatures. Its foreign policy positions—shaped partly through committees like the China Working Group—influence a generation of left activists.
The who-benefits question is straightforward. Beijing benefits from American progressive organizations that amplify its talking points on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Organizations like Code Pink benefit from Singham’s millions. DSA members benefit from access to Chinese officials and curated trips. And Chinese government institutions benefit from American activists who frame criticism of Beijing as manufactured propaganda.
What gets lost is principled internationalism that could criticize both American militarism and Chinese authoritarianism without serving either power. That used to be the left’s comparative advantage. Now it’s increasingly rare.
The anonymous DSA member who leaked the minutes told Newsweek: “This isn’t what I signed up for and I imagine it’s not what a majority of members signed up for. There’s no way you can be a part of the organization and promote the things they’re doing.”
That member is probably right. Most socialists joining DSA to fight for housing justice or Medicare for All aren’t thinking about CCP influence operations. But organizations accumulate institutional positions through committee work, not membership votes on every foreign policy question.
NYC has the largest Chinese population of any city outside China. Beijing has long sought to shape the city’s politics through business groups, cultural organizations, and political donations. Understanding how American political organizations—particularly those on the rise like DSA—navigate these influence networks matters for democratic accountability.
Neither Mamdani’s administration, NYC-DSA, nor the DSA International Committee responded to requests for comment. Their silence is strategic. But the infrastructure is already built. The question is whether progressive voters and DSA members demand better, or whether the institutional momentum toward Beijing-friendly positions continues undisturbed.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. These meeting minutes provide sunlight. What happens next depends on whether anyone’s watching.