A New Lines investigation reveals a network of charities funneling millions into left-wing platforms that take Beijing’s side on the genocide allegations — and they’re all connected to an American tech magnate
From New Lines Magazine
A monthslong investigation by New Lines can reveal that over the past five years almost $65 million has filtered through various entities connected with people who have defended the Chinese government and downplayed or denied documented human rights violations committed by Beijing against the Uyghur and Turkic Muslim minorities.
This funding has moved through a complex series of mostly tax-deductible investment funds and charities, all linked by virtue of their governance structures to one man: the 67-year-old American tech magnate Neville Roy Singham.
Of mixed Sri Lankan and Jamaican heritage, Singham has long held an ideological affinity with the Chinese Communist Party, dating to his youthful membership in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a Mao-influenced group based in Detroit, Michigan. In his capacity as a cadre of the organization, which advocated revolutionary unionism in opposition to racist policies within reformist unions, Singham took a job at the Detroit Chrysler plant in 1972 at the age of 18.
After attending Howard University, Singham spent the next several years cobbling together a consulting firm for equipment-leasing companies out of a basement in Chicago. In 1993, he named his company Thoughtworks, then expanded its focus to incorporate what Singham calls “Agile” software development, which involves adaptive management, decentralized systems, and close collaboration between developers and users.
In many ways Singham’s radical evolution from an evangelist of the Black industrial working class into a luminary of the information age embodies the high-flown dreams of the transformative ’90s.
According to a biographical note on the Chinese recruitment platform Boss Zhipin, Singham worked with Chinese tech monolith Huawei from 2001 to 2008 as a strategic technical consultant. During that period, he raved about China’s economic model, telling Fortune magazine’s senior editor David Kirkpatrick in 2008, “China is teaching the West that the world is better off with a dual system of both free-market adjustments and long-term planning.” Two years later, Thoughtworks’ Fifth Agile Software Development Conference was held in Beijing, with Singham proclaiming his own influence on Huawei in his opening speech.
Thoughtworks has since expanded to 17 countries, taking on clients in the business world while showing an interest in pro bono work for progressive media such as the news organization Democracy Now! and the Grameen Foundation, a well-regarded nonprofit focusing on microloans to the world’s poor.
In 2017, Singham sold Thoughtworks to Apax, a British private equity fund, for an undisclosed price (although thought to be in the hundreds of millions) and left the company altogether. Apax recently took Thoughtworks public on the Nasdaq stock exchange, in September 2021, with a valuation that nearly reached $9 billion.
Singham did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him via email and phone.
Singham is in a relationship with Jodie Evans, one of the founders of the women’s group Code Pink. New Lines was unable to confirm whether they are officially married, but in February 2019, Evans posted photos on Facebook of the couple celebrating their anniversary and referred to Singham as her husband. Code Pink was formed in 2002 as an activist group for progressive women united in their opposition to the Bush administration’s impending invasion of Iraq.
In September 2020, Evans was one of the speakers at an online conference of far-left activists convened under the slogan of “No Cold War.” The speakers contended that the United States escalates conflict with China, which, according to them, continues to wish for rational, peaceful relations with the West. “Today the U.S. elite are obviously terrified at the tremendous economic success of China,” Evans insisted, arguing that “China is not threatening the U.S. militarily.” Also, she said, “China’s success stands in the way of U.S. domination of the world.”
American history, says Evans, “begins with what is called original sin. China, beginning in the 1400s, has not sought to be a maritime power. Sections of the U.S. capital and the deep state,” a term popularized by the pro-Trump right to characterize the U.S. intelligence community, “sadly have concluded that … China [is] an existential threat.”
Pitting the virtually irredeemable U.S. against the innocent and besieged China has become something of a narrative mainstay among segments of the anti-imperialist left in North America. Ostensibly rooted in ideological conviction, this line of thinking is also incredibly well financed.
One of the primary conduits for these donations, the People’s Support Foundation (PSF), was co-founded by Evans; documents describe her as its president. With an avowed mission to empower people through education, research and community, the PSF appears harmless, like any other philanthropic organization seeking to do good in the world. Capitalized to a tune of $163.7 million, PSF, which is registered in the U.S. as a 501(c)(3) organization that grants its funders tax-deductible status for their donations, invests heavily in corporate stocks and securities and uses its revenue to disburse grants to other like-minded funds and educational projects. An unmistakable bias in favor of the Chinese government runs throughout the activities of PSF, which has no website.
Alexander Reid Ross, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right and senior data analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute. Courtney Dobson previously worked in academia and the nonprofit sector in Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.