NRDC Gang Funding Shapiro and Doing China Dirty Work
Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
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The NRDC Gang, a Rockefeller family creation, is, as we pointed out four years ago, enmeshed with Communist China and is also throwing money at Josh Shapiro.
The New York Post recently ran an expose with respect to the NRDC’s gang Communist China connection. It’s quite good, although the article is a bit late to the news. We talked about that connection way back in 2018 and earlier in 2016. Our guest blogger Kevin Mooney also wrote about it a month ago. The NRDC is deeply enmeshed with China, which means it is doing business with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the Post nicely explains and Josh Shapiro is a beneficiary of the NRDC largesse, as Kevin showed. Let’s review what we’ve learned.
First, understand that the NRDC gang, as I like to refer to them, is Rockefeller through and through. The Rockefeller family is the gang of elites with its fingers in everything connected with the NRDC. The Post, in fact, carried an article I wrote about that subject some nine years ago. And, the Rockefellers are invested in China big-time:
Steven Clark Rockefeller, the son of Nelson Rockefeller, the former Governor of New York and Vice-President, has served as one of the trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which funds all sorts of fractivist groups, including the Sierra Club, the Sustainable Markets Foundation, the League of Conservation Voters and 350.org. He is also a trustee of the Asian Cultural Council. His son, Steven Clark Rockefeller, Jr., like his father, is a big Asian fan.
Steven, Jr. is Rose Rock Capital (part of the Rose Rock Group headquartered at Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan). This outfit is, through such vehicles as the Rose Rock Partners Fund, has invested heavily in China with a “primary focus is on development, in partnership with Tianjin Innovative Finance Investment Company Ltd., of the Yujiapu Financial District in Tianjin’s special economic zone.” Moreover:
Rose Rock, which controls 90 percent of the fund management venture, will be responsible for daily management and operation of the funds, while its Chinese partner will focus on government relationships, the article said.
Money raised will be used to build a landmark commercial property project in Tianjin’s financial district, while future investment will expand into other areas including infrastructure, culture and education, the newspaper said.
As I noted in 2016, “it’s nice when you can invest freely and your Chinese minority partners handle any problems with the Communist dictatorship, of course. It makes for a neat arrangement, especially when you’re trying get in on the ground floor of a Chinese oil and gas industry that’s now opening up to foreign investment ‘or the first time ever.’”
Notice, too, that very non-specific word “infrastructure” but a little Internet searching of “Tianjin” plus “oil and gas infrastructure” yielded this (emphasis added):
Orlando, FL – based Merletti Partners International has formed a strategic alliance with Hong Kong firm Rose Rock Infrastructure, Ltd. Rose Rock, through its joint venture with Hongfa Investment Group, will construct and manage a new petrochemical import terminal in Tianjin. Merletti will handle all project-related security and will manage ongoing security needs once the terminal becomes operational.
The Joint Venture represents the first time in history that a Western company has a stake in a Chinese petrochemical port…
Projected terminal storage for products will be 800,000m(3) (approx. 211 Million US Gallons). The terminal will mainly be used for fuel oil, marine oil, gasoline, diesel, and benzene.
So, we learned six years ago the Rockefellers aren’t just invested in infrastructure, but, specifically, oil and gas infrastructure and in a major way. Contrary to every bit of preaching by the family and their well paid shills, they have been investing, not divesting, in oil and gas in China.
But, that wasn’t al, as I explained in 2018. Check out this story from March of that year and this, in particular:
New York-based Rockefeller Capital Management, formed through the acquisition of family office Rockefeller & Co. by its management team as well as an investment fund from Viking Global Investors and a Rockefeller family trust, officially launched last week, with $18.5 billion in assets under advisement in its existing asset management and wealth management businesses….
Viking owns a majority stake in the firm, while the trust representing the family owns about 10 percent. The firm’s board also includes Rockefeller family members David Rockefeller Jr., son of the family patriarch who died in 2017, and Peter M. O’Neill, a Rockefeller heir who has long overseen the family’s investments.
And, where was Rockefeller Capital Management focused? Well, perhaps this title block for a now removed article on its website by Chief Investment Strategist Jimmy C. Chang provided a clue:
This explains an awful lot of the concerns raised by two Congressman regarding the NRDC in 2018, among which were the following:
The NRDC’s relationship with China has many of the criteria identified by U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement as putting an entity at risk of being influenced or coerced by foreign interests…
The NRDC leadership regularly meets with senior Chinese and Communist Party officials. NRDC press releases, blog posts, and reports consistently praise the Chinese government’s environmental initiatives and promote the image of China as a global environmental leader…
The NRDC appears to practice self-censorship , issue selection bias, and generally refrains from criticizing Chinese officials. …
The NRDC has never condemned, or even mentioned, China’s illegal and environmentally destructive island reclamation campaign that has covered over 3,200 acres of coral reefs with runways, ports, and other military facilities. Of note, the NRDC collaborates with Chinese government entities that are deeply involved in Chinese efforts to assert sovereignty over the South China Sea in contravention of intemational law…
Over the last two decades, [the NRDC] has also sued the U.S. Navy multiple times to stop or drastically limit naval training exercises in the Pacific arguing that naval sonar and anti-submarine warfare drills harm marine life. We are unaware of the NRDC having made similar efforts to curtail naval exercises by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy…
The Committee is concerned that the NRDC’s need to maintain access to Chinese officials has influenced its political activities in the United States and may require compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
It doesn’t get more serious than these accusations, but there is more from that recent New York Post story:
The NRDC, though, rarely condemns the communist government in China despite the nation’s massive world-leading carbon footprint and its commitment to fossil fuel energy. China accounts for about 27% of total global emissions — nearly tripling the total in the U.S., the world’s second-largest emitter, according to Rhodium Group — and continues to approve and construct a large amount of coal power plants.
“China has made a serious commitment to turning its cities into healthier places to live and currently leads the world in renewable energy installation and electric vehicle penetration,” the NRDC website states.
While the group has a sizable international program that extends into Canada, India and Latin America, its sole office outside the U.S. is located in Beijing, China’s capital city. The NRDC’s Chinese language website states the office is registered under the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and supervised by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration of China.
The NRDC’s most recent tax filings showed that the Chinese office is staffed with 35 employees and has a $4.2 million annual budget. By comparison, the group’s international work in North America, South America, South Asia and the Middle East has 11 staffers and a $1.1 million annual budget…
Amanda Maxwell, the managing director of NRDC’s international program … said the NRDC has never received any funding directly or indirectly from organizations affiliated with the CCP. The Internal Revenue Service generally does not require nonprofit organizations to publicly disclose donor information.
She added that non-profit organizations like the NRDC are required in China to register with a government sponsor to coordinate in-country activities, explaining why the group’s activities are supervised by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, China’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“We advise our sponsor, the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration, of our work plan for in-country activities involving any Chinese entity, government or private,” Maxwell told Fox News Digital. “And we provide the agency with an annual report assessing the outcome of our work, which centers on providing independent analysis and policy recommendations to the government of China.”
…Stil, numerous key members of NRDC’s Beijing office have previously worked for China’s communist government or left the group for a government position.
For example, Jieqing Zhang, the director of NRDC’s China program, was the former deputy director-general of China’s International Cooperation Department under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Kai Duan, an NRDC senior project manager, also worked for a subagency within the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
JingJing Qian, a current senior strategic adviser for the group’s China program, formerly worked at China’s Ministry of Science and Technology. Another senior adviser, Yinying Chen, previously worked in “universities, government agencies, state-owned enterprises and private companies,” her NRDC profile says.
Hui Huang, a project manager for NRDC’s climate and energy project in China, in the past worked for the China Datang Corporation, a state-owned electricity generation firm.
And, Zhiming Pan, the director of NRDC’s city project, was previously an official at the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development…
The NRDC also has regularly published blog posts commending China for its climate actions.
“China’s leaders are sending a clear signal that China’s shift from fossil fuels to clean energy is accelerating and that ‘new energy’ should be the basis for China’s future energy system, rather than fossil fuels,” NRDC senior adviser Alvin Lin wrote in 2021.
Another 2021 blog post, from other NRDC experts, claimed China’s agreement to a United Nations treaty was “a major global climate win that should also lend a boost of confidence to broader climate talks heating up this year.”
Andrew Wetzler, NRDC’s chief program officer, wrote in 2018 that the “most exciting work in conservation” was taking place in China.
The reader will now, I hope, understand why I say the NRDC is enmeshed in China and with the CCP and Kevin Mooney brought it all home to Pennsylvania with this:
Climate change activists opposed to energy production in Pennsylvania like what they see in Josh Shapiro, the attorney general now running for governor.
Campaign finance records show the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund (NRDC) is contributing to the Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania Action Fund, which in turn is contributing to Shapiro’s gubernatorial bid…
NRDC Action Votes and the Conservation Voters of PA Victory Fund recently announced they would spend $500,000 in independent expenditure campaign funds on behalf of Shapiro. Apparently, environmental activists expect Shapiro to cut a path toward their preferred regulatory policies if elected.
Yes, Josh Shapiro is a NRDC favorite and, therefore, a presumed China favorite as well. That’s all a trade union union member should reall needs to know but Shapiro is trying to evade the obvious with mealy-mouthed statements such as this:
“Josh Shapiro rejects the false choice between protecting jobs and protecting our plants – he believes we must do both, and he will support Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry, invest in clean energy, and protect Pennsylvanians’ constitutional right to clean air and pure water. He will protect the jobs we have while creating thousands more, and that’s why workers in the energy industry and environmental advocates have endorsed his campaign,” said Shapiro campaign spokesman Will Simons.
Shapiro, as I noted here, is as anti-gas as it gets and no amount of equivocating will change that. He’s a NRDC toady, in fact, and trade union members should realize their jobs will be going to slave laborers making solar panels in China on behalf of the CCP and the NRDC if they vote for this con man.
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