'I love you': Longtime Harris ally has been friends with CCP group's top exec for over a decade

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FIRST ON FOX: A decades-long friend and mentee of Vice President Kamala Harris and who is running for Congress in California has been friends with a top executive of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) front group for more than a decade, a Fox News Digital review found.

In early 2022, a year before James Chau became the president of the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), he wrote on Twitter, now X, "Belated best wishes to my friend and sister [Lateefah Simon] as she builds on her years is (sic) service [Akonadi Foundation] to lead Meadow Fund."

"These are complex times — yet also times in which skill and compassion count even more," he continued. "Looking forward to seeing the deep impact of your work."

Simon, who is currently running for Rep. Barbara Lee’s House seat and was a key speaker at the 2024 DNC convention on behalf of Harris, responded, "I love you James. Hong Kong this summer!"

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Lateefah Simon, center, a longtime friend and mentee of Vice President Kamala Harris, has been friends with James Chau, left, the president of a CCP group, for over a decade. (Fox News)

"You have the freehold on my heart," he responded.

In another social media post, Chau posted a picture of what appears to be an art exhibit of a tree with dozens of leaves and a caption that reads, "What are you THANKFUL for?" Chau said the tree is "not large enough" and tagged Simon, prompting her to respond with a red heart emoji.

"The premise of this story is absurd and has no basis in facts or reality," Elizabeth Power, Simon campaign spokesperson, told Fox News Digital when reached for comment.

The two Twitter exchanges, along with several other social media posts from Chau, came at a time when Chau was already actively working for CUSEF. Chau "joined CUSEF in 2018" and was "working with its founder The Hon. Tung Chee-hwa" before he became the group’s president in 2023, according to his CUSEF bio.

Fox News Digital has extensively reported on Tung Chee-hwa, who served as a vice chair of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a key part of the CCP’s united front system, which operates to advance the CCP's interests at home and abroad.

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One report details how Julia Wilson, a Black public relations consultant, was paid over $1 million by Chee-hwa's CUSEF to help the Chinese government learn about Black Americans and gain influence with historically black colleges and universities and Black leaders. 

"In 2009, the former chief executive of Hong Kong [Tung Chee-hwa] visited me in my office with his staff from the China-United States Exchange Foundation, and they wanted to know how we got a Black president," Wilson, whose office is across the street from the White House, told college students during a 2017 presentation. "They were saying, 'We don't know anything about Black people. So can you write us a white paper and share it with us? How did Black people get enough power to vote a Black man into office?' So they really needed an overview of our history. Who are we? Who are African Americans?"

Tung Chee-hwa is the vice chair of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. (YouTube/Screenshot)

CUSEF's most recent annual report, which was published in July, reveals how the "independent, non-profit and non-governmental foundation" is heavily influenced by the CCP, ranging from advisers and partners to donors. One of the top partners of CUSEF is the People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, which was previously labeled as a "Beijing-based organization tasked with co-opting subnational governments" and seeking to "directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda," according to a 2022 report from the Biden administration’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Another partner on CUSEF's annual report is the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an instrumental part of the CCP's apparatus that regularly coordinates with top CCP branches and leaders, according to its website. Other partners include top Chinese and American universities like Princeton, Georgetown, Harvard and Columbia. Sidwell Friends School, the elite boarding school where former President Obama's daughters and President Biden's grandchildren attended, was also on the list.

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Several of CUSEF's donors, which include Chinese billionaires, also have CCP ties. Wang Jianlin, the billionaire chair of the Wanda Group, is a CCP member and served in the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. He is also a longtime member of the CPPCC. Bernard Chan, another donor listed in CUSEF's annual report, appears to be the same Bernard Chan who served as the Hong Kong Deputy to the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, the highest organ of state power in the CCP, for 15 years.

Multiple members of CUSEF's governing board also have CCP ties, including Peter Woo, who is currently a member of the Standing Committee of the 11th CPPCC. Liu Changle, the founder of the Chinese state-owned Phoenix Satellite Television, also has several CCP ties, according to CUSEF's website.

Chau, who was previously an anchor for China's state-owned China Central Television, has posted about Tung several times on his X account and has interviewed him multiple times. In 2017, while serving as a contributor for China's state-owned CGTN, Chau sat down for an interview with Tung and discussed U.S.-China relations. A year later, he started working with Tung at CUSEF.

Lateefah Simon speaks during a press conference on Feb. 10, 2020, in Oakland, Calif. (Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

Earlier this summer at the DNC, Simon reflected on her longtime friendship with Harris, including her experience working alongside her in the early 2000s.

"When she sees you, she truly sees you," Simon said in August at the 2024 DNC. "She is the best among us. After working with Kamala Harris day in and day out for five years to create programs that supported young people to get out of the criminal justice system once and for all with good jobs, with opportunity, she wanted to get to the root cause of a broken criminal justice system."

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Chau and Simon met in San Francisco in 2008 while working to combat HIV and have been friends over the years, including connecting over her husband and Chau's father both passing away weeks apart, according to the opening segment of a 2020 interview between them, which was part of CUSEF's "The China Current" digital platform. At the end of the interview, which revolved around the pandemic and the "inequities in a healthcare system" for people of color, Simon said, "I love you dearly, Mr. James. Let's talk more."

Months later, Chau called Simon "brilliant" in a Twitter post, saying he was "watching this important discussion on the history of black organising (sic) in Oakland—one of the centers of global civil rights."

In 2019, CUSEF published a post on their website, highlighting how they have engaged with Black Americans "in cooperation with the Congressional Black Caucus and other civil society organizations focusing on the [B]lack community in the U.S."

Fox News Digital reached out to CUSEF and the Harris campaign but did not receive any response.