Americans may know Elaine Chao as the former Bush and Trump-era cabinet official whose husband led the Senate Republican conference for more than two decades, but her involvement in government didn’t stop with roles in the United States. According to an explosive new Daily Caller News Foundation report, Chao “received at least four Chinese government positions since 2008.”
Several of these roles, first documented by the Chinese government and media, were in divisions of the “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organ” the United Front Work Department (UFWD), which is known for its espionage and influence operations designed to sway global conversations and policy to align with CCP leader Xi Jinping’s political goals. The UFWD prides itself on co-opting Chinese nationals living overseas, particularly through “elite capture and public diplomacy,” to “advance Chinese influence, power and access to technology abroad.”
At least two of the Chao’s titles with UFWD-affiliated organizations appear to have overlapped with her time as a U.S. cabinet official.
“United front work damages U.S. interests through legal and illegal technology transfer, surveillance of Chinese diaspora communities, promotion of favorable narratives about the PRC through ostensibly independent voices, and the neutralization or harassment of critics of the CCP,” one memorandum from Congress’ select committee on the Chinese Communist Party detailed.
One of Chao’s alleged appointments, as advisor and fifth council committee member of the UFWD’s All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFORC), partially coincided with her time as Trump’s Transportation Secretary. During that same period, 2012 to 2017, reporting suggests Chao and her father were also advisors to the UFWD’s China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA) located in Shanghai’s Jiading District. By 2019, Chao’s sister Angela became director of COFA’s national organization.
Even before that, Chao and her father, alongside “several Chinese government officials,” were reportedly named honorary chairmen of the ACFORC’s third council. At the time, Chao was serving in George W. Bush’s cabinet as Labor Secretary.
Chao did not have a substantive answer for the conflicts of interest exposed by the Daily Caller. Instead, the spokesman for her family’s shipping company called the reporting “hurtful and racist.”
“No one seems to care when most American business or political leaders hold meetings in China, so it’s suspicious when the Daily Caller makes insinuations about a former two-time cabinet secretary of Asian descent, especially based on photos, some of which are decades old,” Foremost Group’s Patrick O’Connor said. “The secretary is a proud American who has devoted most of her professional life to serving the American people. To question her patriotism is a double standard, at best — racist, at worst.”
He wasn’t the only one to dub the Daily Caller’s reporting racist. Former National Security Council’s director for China Dennis Wilder called the allegations “another racist attack on one of America’s finest public servants.”
Smearing criticism of its foreign influence missions as “prejudice,” the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warns, is a commonly used UFWD tactic.
“It is precisely the nature of United Front work to seek influence through connections that are difficult to publicly prove and to gain influence that is interwoven with sensitive issues such as ethnic, political, and national identity, making those who seek to identify the negative effects of such influence vulnerable to accusations of prejudice,” one of the Commission’s 2018 research documents states.
The Daily Caller reportedly supplied O’Connor with “Chinese government and state media photos published between 2010 and 2026 showing Chao meeting with officials from the CCP and/or UFWD,” but he continued to deny Chao’s involvement in Chinese Communist Party organizations.
“She has never held a position with a foreign government or acted on behalf of one. We are not aware she has met with representatives from UFWD entities,” O’Connor claimed.
When the Daily Caller questioned Chao’s 2009 role as the Wuhan municipal government international advisor, which state media allegedly praised because it could mean “more favorable conditions for Wuhan in matters of foreign affairs and attracting overseas talent,” spokesman O’Connor again waved off the allegations.
He suggested that while Chao “received countless honorary degrees, titles, recognitions, keys to the city and other official awards over her career in public service,” she was not always aware of the “title bestowed to her, in part, because she is not fluent in Chinese.”
Less than 10 years later Chao’s sister and father also “received Wuhan government advisory positions.”
Whether Chao was financially compensated for her various involvement in Chinese politics is unclear. The scope of her influence in China and, subsequently, China’s influence on the former U.S. cabinet official and her family, however, is clear. In fact, it has been for a long time.
Chao’s “extensive personal” connections to the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders were no secret when Bush nominated her to head the Department of Labor in 2001. Yet, her alleged involvement in Chinese politics was never seriously and publicly probed.
The lack of curiosity from the U.S. government about Chao’s China ties and frequent visits ultimately paved the way for her to hold other prominent positions in American politics including leading the Department of Transportation during Trump’s first administration.
As the Daily Caller noted, Chao failed to disclose “any of the reported Chinese government positions during her January 2017 DOT secretary Senate confirmation hearing” even though the nomination process demands a list of “any advisory, consultative, honorary, or other part-time service or positions with Federal, State, or local governments, other than those listed above, within the last ten years.”
By the time Chao was installed as Transportation Secretary, she had spent more than 30 years working on and off in and around the White House and Executive Branch, relying heavily on her experience.
Not only are a majority of Foremost’s ships built in state-owned shipyards, but some are even financed by the Chinese Communist Party. They are then used to deliver cargo outlined in contracts with the communist government, which has clearly stated goals to rapidly expand its industries to compete with the U.S.
In 2018, investigative author Peter Schweizer documented how Mitch McConnell’s marriage to Chao changed his once-strong stance against China and how he would “increasingly avoid public criticism of China.”
In 2022, shortly after Trump complained about Chao and McConnell’s China ties on Truth Social, I outlined how the couple’s glaring conflicts of interests, including with the Chao family’s maritime shipping company in China, not only compromised our national security but handed them decades of well-documented self enrichment. One week after my article debuted, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board sided with Chao, smeared Trump’s accusations about her ties to China as racist, and attacked my reporting as “innuendo.”
“The Journal’s editorial managed two remarkable feats that we simply must talk about. First, it unwittingly confirmed why McConnell and Chao are compromised. Second, it weaponized identity politics to smear critics of two powerful politicians as bigots,” then-Federalist Culture Editor and The Hill’s Rising co-host Emily Jashinsky noted.
