WASHINGTON — A socialist billionaire with deep ties to Beijing’s foreign influence system and American leftist networks is behind the funding and messaging driving pro‑Hamas campaigns among American youth, a new report from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism asserts.

At the heart of this operation, the report states, is Neville Roy Singham—a U.S. tech mogul turned Shanghai-based political influencer whose transnational network is linked to Chinese state entities. Singham funnels financial and infrastructural resources through nonprofits, media outlets, and social platforms to mobilize anti-Israel activism on U.S. campuses and to target Jewish businesses and American politicians, the GWU report says.

Titled CCP Influence in U.S. Pro-Palestinian Activism, it outlines how American pro-Palestinian movements are increasingly intersecting with influence operations orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party.

Most troubling is the documented overlap between Singham’s network and designated terrorist networks, including the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which is led by a Vancouver-based lawyer with longstanding ties to the Iranian regime.

Samidoun and related U.S.-based entities mobilized rapidly following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist assault on Israel, the report indicates. Within days, students took over academic buildings, marched with Palestinian flags, and demanded the severing of institutional ties to Israel. Beneath the slogans and mass mobilizations, however, GWU researchers found a sophisticated political machine—primarily traceable to Neville Roy Singham and to the Chinese Communist Party’s long-standing efforts to destabilize the United States and its democratic allies.

The report traces a sprawling network of media and nonprofits that share funding pipelines, key personnel, communications infrastructure, and ideological messaging.

One striking example of Singham’s direct ties to China’s party-state apparatus involves a YouTube program affiliated with his media network, reportedly co-produced with Shanghai’s municipal propaganda department.

Singham gained wider attention in August 2023 when The New York Times revealed his connections to Beijing’s United Front Work Department-linked media ecosystem, documenting that he was funding multiple pro-China groups via opaque donation routes. A former strategic advisor to Huawei between 2001 and 2008—the telecom giant designated a U.S. national security threat in 2020—Singham sold his tech firm ThoughtWorks in 2017 for $785 million. He immediately relocated to China and began investing in international political projects openly aligned with CCP ideology.

From 2018 to 2023, Singham’s network directed at least $65 million into nonprofits and media outlets aligned with CCP messaging.

At the center of this political‑media web sits The People’s Forum, a Manhattan activist hub that researchers describe as a command center for radical pro‑Palestinian activism and pro‑China propaganda. In 2021, the group hailed Singham as a “Marxist comrade” whose donations advanced “political education, culture & internationalism.” Its programming features seminars on Xi Jinping Thought and events celebrating China’s “unique model of socialist construction.” Housed in a state-of-the-art facility in midtown Manhattan—complete with television studios, classrooms, and professional-grade production infrastructure—the Forum functions as both a media engine and a base of operations for ideological mobilization.

From 2017 to 2022, The People’s Forum drew roughly $20 million through donor-advised funds—$12 million of it in 2019 via the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund—according to financial records reviewed by the Network Contagion Research Institute and cited in the GWU study.

The numbers point to a sharp pivot toward pro-Hamas messaging:

According to analysis cited in the report, this facility serves as a command and control center for the #ShutItDown4Palestine (SID4P) movement, which launched days after the October 7 Hamas massacre.

SID4P has coordinated university building takeovers, targeted actions against U.S. senators and Jewish institutions, and protest campaigns across the country. The GWU report’s digital forensics review found that the movement’s donation and communications infrastructure are deeply embedded in Singham’s financial ecosystem.

The GWU report ties Samidoun and its Canada-based leader Charlotte Kates to SID4P’s protest operations, noting that Kates has repeatedly appeared at events hosted by SID4P and The People’s Forum. Samidoun has since been banned in Canada and sanctioned by the U.S. government due to its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.- and Canada-designated terrorist organization.

Kates, a U.S.-born lawyer now residing in Vancouver, is married to Khaled Barakat, a senior militant propagandist aligned with Iranian and Palestinian armed resistance. She has advocated for militant Palestinian groups for over two decades and has been barred from entering Germany due to her activities.

On February 4, 2024, Samidoun co-hosted a Zoom event with the Bronx Antiwar Coalition titled How to Defend Palestinian Resistance. During the session, Charlotte Kates and others encouraged attendees to donate to support Palestinian prisoners, confirming that donations were still being accepted via paper checks due to interference from credit processors.

Samidoun’s link to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is thoroughly documented. Founded in 1967, the PFLP gained infamy for hijackings, assassinations, and suicide bombings, and now maintains operational ties with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). A PFLP spokesperson has referred to the Iran relationship as one of “blood brothers,” praising the regime’s material support for attacks in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank.

According to a seperate GWU report on Samidoun, at an April 2024 event at Columbia University, Kates publicly declared:

“Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad is not a terrorist organization. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is not a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization.”

She described these groups as “resistance fighters” and “heroes,” despite all being designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the United States. In May 2024, she appeared in a webinar where she praised Hamas’s October 7 attacks and called for global solidarity. That August, she received an Islamic Human Rights award in Tehran, honoring “Palestinian martyrs and prisoners” and again praising the October 7 massacre. Canadian authorities have since launched a hate speech investigation tied to her remarks.

Kates has also publicly celebrated the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, quoting a PFLP operative who called the murder a “symbol of heroism” and linking to the PFLP’s official website glorifying the act.

Meanwhile, although China has attempted to project an image of neutrality in Middle East conflicts, the messages and operations disseminated through Singham’s media networks and operations linked to Kates and Samidoun tell a different story, according to GWU report analysis.

The report points to a constellation of affiliated outlets—BreakThrough News, Dongsheng News, Tricontinental Institute, and People’s Dispatch—serving to amplify anti-Western narratives and promote CCP-aligned statements, often operating from shared addresses and managed by overlapping personnel.

“These statements and actions are not just reactions; they are part of a broader Chinese strategy to influence global opinion, discredit the West, and expand China’s power by spreading its message through media and activist groups,” the report states.

“The overlap between China’s foreign policy rhetoric and the slogans of pro-Palestinian protests is clear. Both frame the conflict in terms of colonialism and imperialism, with calls to end Gaza’s suffering and critiques of U.S. support for Israel.”