Vice President Kamala Harris may have made waves for her outstanding fundraising numbers, but that money allegedly came from a Chinese executive who has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
According to a Driving Force Action PAC report, Harris, initially meant for President Joe Biden, accepted money from Stella Ke Li, a Chinese national and senior executive at BYD— a Chinese electric vehicle company seen as a national security threat.
In 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration provided $395,000 to BYD under its billion-dollar Clean School Bus program. Six months before the funds were successfully transferred, Ke Li reportedly wired $50,000 in political contributions to Harris’s presidential aspirations. FEC filings found that Ke Li also donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund—now the Harris Victory Fund— $18,400 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and an individual contribution of $6,600 to the Biden campaign, which is now the Harris campaign.
Driving Force Action penned a letter to Harris, demanding she return the money to Ken Li and disassociate from BYD and others with ties to the CCP.
BYD has been described as a company that benefits from substantial support from the Chinese government through direct subsidies and military-civil fusion initiatives. As detailed in various reports, BYD collaborates with military affiliates on significant projects, including data aggregation from vehicles and technology sharing with state-owned enterprises. Furthermore, Ms. Ke Li, who made these contributions, appears to be married to Wang Chuanfu, BYD’s founder and a prominent CCP member.
The acceptance of political contributions from an executive of a company with such ties to the CCP raises serious ethical and national security concerns, especially in light of your campaign’s previous stance on reducing reliance on foreign adversaries for critical industries like electric vehicles. While you have recently spoken in support of American manufacturing and expressed concern about China’s dominance in the electric vehicle market, accepting contributions from BYD appears inconsistent with these statements.
The letter argued that if Harris is committed to preserving American jobs and helping her country, she will remain transparent in her campaign. The PAC runs ads across critical states to secure the election, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio.
Congress began investigating BYD in September over espionage concerns, claiming that the Chinese government is potentially using Chinese automakers that sell its electric cars in the U.S. for "nefarious purposes" such as collecting American data, spying on American citizens through in-car cameras, and remotely hijacking the vehicles.