A wealthy American businessman living in Shanghai has built an extensive web of ties to Chinese Communist Party-linked universities, media outlets, and forums, and has used the proceeds from selling his tech company to fund a sprawling network of Marxist activist groups operating inside the United States and around the world, a Just the News investigation reported.
Roy Singham, full name Neville Roy Singham, sold his ThoughtWorks tech company in 2017. Since then, he has operated from Shanghai, channeling money into communist-aligned organizations and publishing pro-CCP propaganda in Chinese state-adjacent media, all while insisting he takes no orders from Beijing.
Republican congressional investigators have taken notice. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith has scrutinized Singham's activities inside China, and some Republicans in Congress now want him forced to register as a foreign agent. The question hanging over the whole affair is straightforward: How does an American citizen end up embedded this deeply in the CCP's ideological infrastructure, and what does that infrastructure want from the United States?
At a Global South Academic Forum held in Shanghai in November, Singham presented a 174-page report titled "Understanding Who Saved Humanity: A Restorationist History." The forum was jointly hosted by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, an organization Singham chairs the advisory board of, and East China Normal University, a government-run institution.
Singham admitted during the forum that he wrote the report to combat the U.S.-backed "international rules-based order" and to help achieve a "new world order" more favorable to China and CCP leader Xi Jinping. That is not a paraphrase or an inference. It is what the man said, in Shanghai, at a forum organized by a Chinese state university.
Vijay Prashad, the Marxist leader of Tricontinental, delivered a lengthy keynote introducing Singham and his report. Prashad has called Singham "one of my oldest & dearest friends" and "a Marxist with a massive software company." He said the funds from the sale of ThoughtWorks "were the original source for [Tricontinental's] endowment, & other projects, which we hope will last for at least a generation."
That endowment now fuels an activist network that reaches across continents. And the forum itself drew keynote speeches from Li Shenming, a former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Wang Hui, a professor at Tsinghua University, both figures embedded in China's academic and political establishment.
The reach of Beijing's influence operations is not limited to one American businessman. Concerns about CCP-linked entanglements have surfaced repeatedly in Washington, including a 2013 photo showing Rep. Eric Swalwell with a senior Chinese diplomat that raised questions about the depth of those relationships.
Singham has not merely attended CCP-aligned events. He has written for Guancha, a Chinese outlet that Reporters Without Borders has described as "Chinese propaganda media." The China Media Project assessed that Guancha "is not directly controlled by the CCP but abides closely by government narratives." Singham published multiple articles for Guancha under the pen name "Luo Yi."
In one piece published in September, Singham marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with rhetoric that could have come straight from a CCP textbook. He wrote:
"This is a colossal lie. The truth is crystal clear in the data: while Western powers were calculating their economic interests, the Soviet Union and the Chinese people paid a bloody price. It was not Anglo-American capital that defeated fascism, but the leadership of socialism and the heroism of the people, originating from the brilliant strategies of Moscow and Yan'an."
He went further, framing current geopolitics in revolutionary terms:
"This is a war that has not ended. From Korea to Vietnam, from Indonesia to Gaza, the imperialist sword has always been aimed at people resisting oppression."
Guancha's editor-in-chief, He Shenquan, has written for and served on the editorial board of the Global Times, an outlet the U.S. State Department designated as a "foreign mission" of the Chinese government during the first Trump Administration due to its state control. Dissent Magazine reported that Guancha founder Eric Li "plays an important role in the ecosystem of this new state-aligned nationalism."
The network's Chinese media footprint extends well beyond one outlet. When Guancha published a piece promoting Singham's November report, the story was reposted by Phoenix New Media, Sina Corporation, Sohu, and Tencent QQ. Baike Baidu, China's version of Wikipedia, carried an entry promoting Singham's paper and the conference. Chinese state media including China Global Television Network, Shanghai Media Group, Jiefang Daily, and The Paper all conducted special reports on the forum.
East China Normal University is not a passive academic partner. The House Select Committee on the CCP issued a report noting that ECNU "hosts a State Key Laboratory of Precision Spectroscopy. They were involved in the balloon incidents from China in 2023. It partners with a defense lab and the [blacklisted China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.]"
The committee's assessment of schools like ECNU was blunt: "They are under the thumb of the CCP." The report added that such institutions "operate under PRC law; are run by Chinese-majority boards and have Party presence in leadership; and are aligned with the CCP's national strategy, including its military buildup."
In 2021, ECNU signed a "strategic cooperation agreement" with Shanghai Maku Culture Communication, a company Just the News described as closely linked to the Singham Network. The signing ceremony drew ECNU officials including Deputy CCP Secretary and Vice Dean Du Binbin, Vice Deans Chen Hong and Xiao Yang, Maku co-founders Xiong Jie, Zhu Weiyan, and Zhou Yihua, and Tricontinental members Zhai Tingjun and Marco AF Gaspar.
Lu Xinyu, a "distinguished professor" and "doctoral supervisor" at ECNU's School of Communication, attended the 2021 ceremony as dean. In an interview with Brasil de Fato about the November forum, Lu declared:
"China is the only major rising socialist power. We are engaged in a significant struggle against U.S. imperial hegemony. We firmly believe that a new global history, a new historical perspective, and a new worldview must be built on a world history in which the people are the central subject."
Lu also said "the Communist Party of China and all socialist parties around the world represent progressive, popular interests." The New York Times reported in 2023 that Singham network funds flowed to the group that produces Brasil de Fato. That same year, the Times published a photo showing Singham at a Chinese Communist Party forum.
The national security stakes of foreign influence operations are not theoretical. Just last year, a former Navy sailor was sentenced in San Diego for espionage tied to a foreign power, a reminder that adversaries actively recruit Americans to serve their interests.
Republican lawmakers are not just watching. Fox News reported that at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Chairman Jason Smith described Singham as the center of a "Singham CCP network" tied to U.S. activist organizations. Smith told the hearing that Singham was "a wealthy former U.S. tech executive living in Shanghai who is cozy, extremely cozy with the Chinese Communist Party."
Smith alleged that Singham and his wife, Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, "donated over $20 million to the People's Forum through shell companies and donor advised funds to hide the original source of the money." Witnesses and lawmakers described a financial architecture of private LLCs, donor-advised funds, and nonprofit pass-through groups directing money to organizations including The People's Forum, Breakthrough News, and Tricontinental.
The pressure has escalated. Breitbart reported that House Oversight Chairman James Comer and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna sent a September 15 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging an asset freeze and sanctions review of Singham and affiliated organizations. The lawmakers allege Singham funneled money to pro-CCP, extremist, and antisemitic groups in the United States, routing nearly $1.8 million to the China-linked Maku Group and spending more than $100 million supporting radical left-wing organizations tied to Beijing.
Rep. Luna said Singham "has spent millions funding militant organizations that have orchestrated violent riots and launched targeted hate campaigns against Americans with different beliefs." The committee letter stated the information is "essential to evaluate current legal authorities and to inform legislation ensuring the U.S. Government has adequate capabilities to combat CCP influence operations."
Dark-money schemes designed to hide the origin of political funds are not unique to foreign influence cases. Domestically, similar financial shell games have surfaced in political corruption scandals involving super PACs and shady LLCs.
Singham has pushed back against the scrutiny. In a 2023 interview with The Hindu, he said:
"I do not work for, nor take instruction from, nor receive funding from the Propaganda Department or any division of the Chinese government or the Communist Party of China... In fact, I do not take orders from any government or political party in the world. I am not now and have never been a member of the Communist Party of China."
That denial sits uneasily next to the record. Singham writes under a pen name for a CCP-narrative-aligned outlet. He presents reports at forums organized by government-run universities with ties to China's military-industrial complex. His money endows organizations that openly champion Beijing's worldview. His network's media arm broadcasts from Chinese state-linked platforms. And when Just the News sought comment for this investigation, Singham did not respond to a request sent through his wife.
South Africa's AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism reported that an August 2021 email from Singham "shines more light on his connections to the Chinese establishment and the extent to which that influenced his network." In that email, Singham reportedly urged recipients to attend an online lecture by Li Bo, whom Singham described as "a very good friend of mine here [in China]."
Questions about foreign entanglements among American public figures keep piling up. Rep. Swalwell's legal team recently fought to block release of FBI files related to his own ties to a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, another case where the full picture remains frustratingly incomplete.
The forum that showcased Singham's report was not a small affair. Its organizers included Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Marxism, Fudan University Institute for Global Communication and All-Media, and the Oriental Publishing Center's Institute for Regional and Country Publishing, part of the state-owned China Publishing Group. People's Dispatch, a Singham-network outlet, was among those that "simultaneously broadcast forum-related information."
Dissent Magazine reported that Guancha collaborator Zhang Weiwei served as Deng Xiaoping's interpreter and sat on a government committee dedicated to launching state-sponsored think tanks. Another figure in Guancha's orbit, Hu Angang, a Tsinghua University think-tank director and party theorist, reportedly suggested China must create a monocultural society of one "state race" to become "a new type of superpower."
These are not fringe academics. They are embedded in the CCP's ideological production line. And Singham's network, funded by American tech wealth, sits at the intersection of that line and the activist left in the United States, Latin America, and beyond.
An American citizen building a propaganda apparatus from inside Shanghai, funded by the sale of an American company, aimed squarely at undermining the international order that protects American interests, if that does not warrant a foreign-agent inquiry, it is hard to imagine what would.
