Rep. Josh Riley, the upstate New York Democrat who campaigns as a flannel-wearing working-class champion, has deep family ties to an organization that partners with Chinese Communist Party, connected groups and promotes Beijing's trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, and he voted against a bill designed to curb Chinese influence at American universities.
Riley's father-in-law, Harinder Kohli, cofounded the Emerging Markets Forum in 2005 and used it six years later to help establish the Emerging Markets Institute at Beijing Normal University, a school controlled by China's Ministry of Education. That university requires its students to "support the leadership of Chinese Communist Party" and "serve the socialist modernization." Kohli has served as the forum's founding director and chief executive, and he edited a 2019 book advising developing countries on how to "realize the promise of the BRI... while avoiding the pitfalls that lie along the way."
Riley attended at least three of the forum's annual global meetings, in 2014, 2017, and 2019, the Washington Free Beacon reported, citing event programs posted on the forum's own website. At the 2017 gathering, Riley spoke on a panel called "The Pushbacks against Globalization: Possible Ways Forward" alongside Biliang Hu, then dean of the Emerging Markets Institute. Hu later became executive dean of Beijing Normal University's Belt and Road School, a program founded to train "international talents for the 'Belt and Road Initiative'" and to promote the program.
Riley did not respond to a request for comment.
Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 with the goal of investing more than $1 trillion in infrastructure across developing countries. Western critics have long warned that the program saddles poorer nations with unsustainable debt, giving Beijing leverage over their governments and strategic assets. Kohli has publicly rejected that criticism.
At the 2019 Emerging Markets Forum global meeting, Kohli praised BRI projects and defended them against accusations of debt-trap diplomacy. His remarks were carried by Xinhua, the CCP-run news agency.
"One of the major shortages and constraints for development in most emerging markets is capital, and the [Belt and Road Initiative] provides that."
When asked about debt-trap concerns, Kohli told the gathering:
"I do not agree with that at all."
Xinhua also reported Kohli's praise of BRI projects as being built to high international standards. That a CCP state outlet chose to amplify those remarks underscores how useful the forum's credibility is to Beijing's messaging operation.
The forum's connections to Beijing's influence apparatus extend beyond the university. In 2015, the Emerging Markets Forum co-hosted the Beijing Forum for Emerging Markets alongside the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. That organization has been identified by the Jamestown Foundation as an arm of the CCP's "United Front" system, a sprawling network designed to build Chinese influence abroad, including by cultivating relationships with foreign government officials and organizations.
A 2019 pamphlet published by the forum itself touts the 2015 partnership. The forum did not attempt to conceal the relationship. It advertised it.
So by the time Riley sat on a 2017 panel beside Biliang Hu, a man who would go on to run Beijing Normal University's Belt and Road School, the forum's institutional ties to CCP-aligned entities were already a matter of public record. Riley participated anyway.
Those connections take on sharper relevance in light of Riley's voting record. In 2025, the House voted on the DETERRENT Act, House Bill 1048, which would have required American colleges and universities to disclose gifts of any amount from "a foreign country of concern", with China and Russia named as examples, and to obtain waivers before signing contracts with such nations. The bill was aimed squarely at the kind of foreign-influence pipeline that runs through institutions like the one Kohli helped build at Beijing Normal University.
More than 30 House Democrats broke with their party and voted to pass the bill. Riley was not among them. He voted no. The bill cleared the House but died in the Senate.
Riley has never publicly explained why he opposed the measure. The Free Beacon's reporting does not include any statement from his office offering a rationale. The congressman's silence on the vote stands alongside his silence in response to the outlet's request for comment about his family's ties to the forum.
Riley has built his political brand around working-class authenticity. He has described himself as a "flannel-wearing fifth-generation upstate New Yorker" who grew up in a "working-class neighborhood" and ran for Congress "to give working families a Square Deal." He first ran for the NY-19 seat in 2022, lost, then won in a rematch against then-Republican congressman Marc Molinaro two years later.
But before he moved back to upstate New York to launch that first campaign, Riley had spent years in Washington. He worked as general counsel to then-Sen. Al Franken and later at Boies Schiller Flexner, an international law firm. In 2020, he purchased a four-bedroom home in Washington, D.C. for $1.6 million, according to local records reported by the Free Beacon.
His 2016 wedding to Monica Kohli, Harinder Kohli's daughter, was a black-tie affair held at the Daughters of the American Revolution National Headquarters in Washington, decked in lavender, berry, fuchsia, and gold. Monica Kohli, a strategic consultant, told The Knot wedding publication at the time:
"We loved that the location was totally DC. We wanted it to reflect our cultural upbringings, but also that we are both urban, young and stylish."
Urban, young, and stylish in Washington. Flannel-wearing and working-class in upstate New York. The congressman's brand shifts depending on the audience.
Riley now faces a 2026 reelection challenge from Republican state senator Peter Oberacker in NY-19, a competitive district where agriculture is a major industry. The race could help determine which party controls the House.
Voters in that district will have to decide whether a congressman whose father-in-law cofounded a CCP-linked institute, who attended that organization's events, and who voted against a bill requiring universities to disclose foreign influence money is the right person to represent their interests, or whether his record suggests his loyalties run through Washington and Beijing before they reach upstate New York.
When your family builds bridges to Beijing and you vote to keep the money pipeline hidden, the flannel doesn't cover much.
