Former top Hochul aide’s unearthed family connections to CCP raises alarm bells

EXCLUSIVE: A former top aide in New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office is the daughter of a former Chinese journalist whose archived biography says he worked for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “Education Department of the News Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department” as a deputy director and served in multiple leadership roles at state-run media outlets, a Fox News Digital investigation found.

Fan Xiaojiang, or Elaine, is currently serving as the chief of staff for Democrat Scott Stringer’s mayoral campaign and has been involved in Democrat politics in New York for more than a decade, including serving as Hochul’s director of Asian affairs between October 2021 and November 2023, according to her Linkedin profile.

The latest campaign finance filing shows that she has been paid more than $120,000 by the Stringer campaign since last August. Stringer’s campaign declined to comment for this story.

Fan, who is originally from Beijing, was recognized by the City University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Communication Research in a 2021 press release promoting her role in the Hochul administration. The press release called her an “alumnus” and boasted about her being “one of the very few Asian-American leaders who hold a senior position in the state’s government.” 

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The press release went on to quote professor Jonathan Zhu, a former supervisor, who said that “Elaine is the third generation of a journalist’s family in China, with her grandfather and father each playing a distinguished role in the respective eras of the nation’s history.”

Fox News Digital can now exclusively confirm that this press release was referring to Fan Dongsheng, her father, and Fan Changjiang, her late grandfather.

When reached for comment on whether Elaine’s father influenced her to go into the media, Zhu confirmed to Fox News Digital that Dongsheng was her father and said, “Although I have never eyewitnessed what Fan Dongsheng told his daughter about career choice, his influence on her is obvious and imaginable.” 

He went on to say that Dongsheng visited the university that his daughter attended a “few times, including a talk to our faculty members and graduate students on his experience in launching and operating Huasheng Monthly, one of the earliest online news websites in China.”

Prior to jumping into state government in 2014 as the “Queens Borough Director & Citywide Asian American Affairs” for Stringer’s comptroller office, Elaine was the “Chief Reporter” for Ming Pao Daily News for almost a decade between 2005 and 2015, according to her Linkedin profile.

A few years before she joined the media outlet, the Jamestown Foundation, a nonpartisan defense policy think tank, sounded the alarm about the media outlet being “heavily influenced” by the Chinese government and revealed that sources told them that the Chinese Consulate in New York was their “true boss.”

This would not be the first time that someone from the Fan family would work for a media outlet influenced by the Chinese government. Fan’s father served as the president and editorial director of China Press, or Qiaobao, in New York between 1999 and 2005, according to multiple archived online bios.

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China Press was not only designated by the State Department during President Donald Trump’s first term as “state-backed propaganda” and a “foreign mission,” but the Hoover Institution also sounded the alarm, saying in a 2020 report that the “state-owned China News Service and the Overseas Chinese Office of the State Council dispatched editorial personnel to the United States” to found Qiaobao.

The elder Fan also served as the “director of the Special Editorial Department of the Chinese News Agency,” which now refers to the Xinhua News Agency, a top state-run propaganda outlet, according to the Hoover Institution. Multiple bios said he was also the deputy director of the “Education Department of the News Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department.”

According to a Chinese government website reviewed by Fox News Digital, the CPD is the “organization primarily responsible for monitoring content to ensure that China’s publishers, in particular its news publishers, do not print anything that is inconsistent with the Communist Party’s political dogma.”

After leaving state-owned media, Dongsheng held multiple leadership roles at the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication at Shantou University, a Chinese university that has sections on their website that promote the CCP “Party Building Work” and hosted a themed life meeting a few years ago on “Strive like an outstanding Communist Party member”

The editor of China Brief at the Jamestown Foundation expressed deep concerns when Fox News Digital reached out about Fan’s familial ties to the CCP, saying she “comes from an illustrious family of CCP journalists.”

“Her grandfather was one of the more prominent propagandists of the CCP’s struggles from the 1930s onwards, while her father worked for a range of party publications managed under the central propaganda department in Beijing,” Arran Hope told Fox News Digital. “This included a stint in the United States, where her daughter now works as chief of staff to mayoral candidate Scott Stringer, following a stint as a reporter for another party outlet here. Fan has not distanced herself from her family legacy, quite the opposite. In 2017, for example, she delivered a speech at a journalism school in the PRC (People’s Republic of China) named in her grandfather’s honor.”

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“More concerning for New York City’s voters, she appears to be actively involved in the party’s United Front system, which seeks to promote the party’s preferences and control both within and without the PRC. She has given speeches at events organized by the PRC Consulate in New York that celebrate United Front organizations in the city,” he continued. “These events call for promoting reunification with Taiwan as well as advocating for the ‘motherland’ and its interests. To have somebody whom PRC diplomats clearly view favorably in such a senior role in New York politics should be cause for concern.”

Elaine Fan’s late grandfather joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1939 and had leadership roles at multiple state-owned media outlets, including as the editor-in-chief of the Xinhua News Agency, deputy director of the General Administration of Information and president of the People’s Daily News Agency, according to multiple bios on Baidu. In addition to her father and grandfather, Fan’s uncle, Fan Xiaojian, joined the CCP in 1976 and has held multiple roles in the CCP, including as the chief economist and director of the finance department of the ministry of agriculture between 1998 and 2000.

He was also a delegate to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and was a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which Fox News Digital previously reported was “designed to liaise with non-Communist Party members – and ultimately see them work with the CCP to advance its interests,” according to a 2021 report from The Diplomat.

During her tenure in the Hochul administration, Elaine attended several events hosted by the Chinese Consulate in New York City and multiple groups that make up China’s United Front, which works to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling,” according to a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report.

Elaine was a guest of honor at an event last September at the consulate in New York City to celebrate the 27th anniversary of the U.S.-Fujian Western Overseas Chinese Association, which is a United Front group, according to the Chinese government. 

She also attended an event called “An Evening of Chinese Culture” hosted by the New York Mets and Sino-American Friendship Association in 2023, which received backlash. According to an August 2022 op-ed from the Washington Post’s deputy opinion editor, “China experts have identified” SAFA as “being involved in United Front work – a global effort to propagandize on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.”

In 2021, Hochul gave a shout-out to Fan while announcing that Chinatown was a $20 Million New York City region winner for revitalization, saying she “forgot to mention Elaine Fan is now my Director of Asian Affairs.” She then told the crowd to “Make sure you get to know Elaine Fan as well.”

Hudson Institute Fellow Michael Sobolik spoke to Fox News Digital about the totality of Fan’s links to the CCP, saying, “This isn’t complicated.”

“If Elaine Fan ever worked for CCP-controlled state media, she shouldn’t be welcome in U.S. electoral politics. If Scott Stringer lacks discernment to insulate a campaign from potential vectors of CCP influence, how can he protect New York City from that malign influence in public office?”

In September 2023, Chinese Consul General Huang Ping in New York hosted a reception at the consulate to celebrate the 74th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which included several officials, including Fan, who delivered remarks at the reception. 

Hochul’s ties to Elaine Fan aren’t the first time that her office has faced scrutiny over concerns about CCP influence. Hochul faced backlash last year after it was revealed that her former deputy chief of staff, Linda Sun, was indicted on charges of “violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy,” according to a Department of Justice press release in September.

Sun’s lawyers have repeatedly denied the charges, but the indictment revealed some damning communications between Sun and Huang Ping, who left his role as the consul general of the New York City Chinese consulate weeks after the indictment against Sun was announced.

Fox News Digital has extensively reported on Ping, who was spotted making visits to top universities, speaking with elected officials and carousing with top media outlets despite his long history of pushing CCP narratives and publicly denying human rights violations against China’s Uyghur population. The unsealed indictment revealed that a speechwriter for then-Lt. Gov. Hochul wanted to mention the “Uyghur situation” in China for her 2021 Lunar New Year message, but the plight of the minority group being persecuted by the Chinese government was ultimately omitted after Sun overruled the speechwriter. 

The indictment says Sun revealed to Ping what the speechwriter wanted to include but insisted that she would not let her boss mention Uyghurs after admitting that she was “starting to lose her temper” with the speechwriter. Ping appeared to chalk up the speechwriter’s suggestion as a clueless American who had never visited China and that U.S.-China relations could “sour” because of “people like the speechwriter,” the indictment said, prompting Sun to concur that the speechwriter had never visited China. Ping would go on to post Hochul’s Lunar New Year message days later on his Facebook page, which did not mention Uyghurs.

Fox News Digital reached out to Fan and Hochul’s office but did not receive a response.