The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation purchased over $20 million of stock in an investment fund principally backing Chinese state-owned companies.
Among the companies included in the foundation’s sizable new holding – Morgan Stanley China A Share Fund Inc. – are state-owned banks, energy companies, and manufacturers. The Gates Foundation Trust took the position on August 23rd, purchasing 1,100,000 shares at an average price of $21.
The largest holding in the fund is the state-owned commercial bank Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, which counts high-level Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks as its current and former executives. The partially state-owned China Merchants Bank is also one of the fund’s biggest holdings.
“We seek capital growth by investing in A-shares of Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges,” the fund summarizes.
State-owned companies including beverage maker Kweichow Moutai, China Yangtze Power, and China Resources Sanjiu Medical & Pharmacy also rank in the fund’s top five largest investments.
The investment follows The National Pulse unearthing the Microsoft founder’s ties to Chinese state-run propaganda campaigns, including those obscuring the origins of COVID-19. Gates’s foundation has also collaborated extensively with Chinese state-run scientific organizations tied to the regime’s military.
He has also invested in Chinese state-run power companies flagged as military proxies of Beijing by the U.S. Department of Defense.
