Joe Biden’s Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman purchased shares in a fund invested in Tencent, a tech firm flagged as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party and its military by the U.S. State Department, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
Financial disclosures reveal Sherman purchasing up to $50,000 in shares of Matthews Asia Dividend Fund, which counts Tencent as one of its top positions, on May 7th 2021. The transaction came roughly one month after Sherman’s Senate confirmation for her critical State Department role.
A separate financial disclosure reveals Sherman purchasing additional shares in the fund, valued up to $15,000, on August 17th amidst the White House’s Afghanistan debacle.
Tencent, however, has been flagged the U.S. State Department as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party, counting many powerful party members among their executive ranks.
The firm has also been involved in the “research, production, and repair of weapons and equipment for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)” and has a “deep record of cooperation and collaboration” with China’s espionage operations, former Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation Christopher Ford revealed.
The State Department has also linked Tencent to the regime’s build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control,” as the company has “no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party “no” if officials decide to ask for their assistance – e.g., in the form of access to foreign technologies, access to foreign networks, useful information about foreign commercial counterparties, insight into patterns of foreign commerce, or specific information about the profiles, activity, or locations of foreign users of Chinese-hosted or -facilitated social media, computer or smartphone applications, or telecommunications.”
The fund, which has over 22 percent of its investments in Chinese companies, counts Tencent as one of its top five holdings in its portfolio.
The unearthed investment follows a National Pulse report exposing Sherman’s praise for Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping as “extraordinary” and participation in trips to China subsidized by communist influence groups. Her husband, former National Journal Correspondent Bruce Stokes, has also taken trips from the same Chinese Communist Party-linked group – the China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) – in exchange for “favorable coverage” of the regime.
