Boston Mayor Opens City Hall Doors To Chinese Communist Party Members
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration appears to have a cozy relationship with a nonprofit that has repeatedly hosted members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Beijing’s intelligence network at City Hall, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.
The Boston Urban Forum (BUF) bills itself as a nonprofit that convenes a “monthly event held at Boston City Hall,” which “invites officials and professionals from political, academic, and business sectors to discuss municipal policies and livelihood issues.” However, individuals identified as CCP members in Chinese government and state media reports have served as moderators and guest speakers for at least half of BUF’s events.
Wu has commended BUF’s founder, Gary Yu, on multiple occasions, and has also approved events supported by Yu and the CCP intelligence arm to which he belongs, Chinese state media reports reveal.
The DCNF did not find any evidence or allegations of a financial relationship between BUF or the CCP with Wu personally.
Wu and Yu did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“China has installed hundreds of CCP proxies in every major city across America,” Ina Mitchell, a Canadian investigative journalist and expert on China’s influence operations, told the DCNF. “These proxies present themselves as civic-minded leaders working to bridge the cultural divide between the U.S. and China at a grassroots level — but they are anything but civic-minded. These bad actors blend in clandestinely, hiding their true allegiance to the ‘motherland’ behind the respectable veneer of legitimate U.S.-based quasi-government organizations.”
‘Co-opting’
Since its founding in 2024, BUF has held 10 events in Boston City Hall, according to its website, at least five of which have included CCP members as moderators or guest speakers, according to a DCNF translation of Chinese government and university reports.
BUF’s website lists the nonprofit’s address as “5 Congress St., Boston, MA 02203,” which is a government building called the Civic Pavilion within the City Hall Plaza, according to Boston’s website. While the city’s website states that individuals may apply to hold events within certain government buildings, such as the Civic Pavilion, the exact nature of BUF’s relationship with the City of Boston remains unclear.
BUF claims it was established “with support from the City of Boston” by Yu, who helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Wu’s mayoral campaign, the DCNF reported in April. Wu reportedly presented BUF with a certificate of recognition on April 14, 2024, thanking the nonprofit for its “contributions and service to the community on behalf of the City of Boston,” according to an announcement made by Yu’s company, Boston International Media Consulting.
Wu and several other New England lawmakers were also previously listed on BUF’s home page as “VIP Guests” until June 19, 2025, when they were quietly removed after the DCNF contacted the nonprofit for comment. BUF did not respond to requests for comment about why it removed the lawmakers from its website. However, BUF continues to list the City of Boston as a “sponsor.”
In total, at least eight CCP members have participated in BUF events since May 2024, with some events featuring more than one Party member.
An October 2024 event titled “Boston Global Scholars Workshop” included at least four CCP members, according to Chinese university records. The event concerned “discussions on scientific and technological innovation,” a BUF post on LinkedIn for the event states.
One of the guest speakers was Wang Hongwei, a member of Tsinghua University’s Party Committee, according to his biography, which was displayed on a projector screen during the event and also read aloud by the moderator, footage shows. In 2018, Tsinghua named Wang Hongwei as an “outstanding CCP member,” Chinese state media reported.
Wang Hongwei’s October 2024 BUF presentation focused on his university’s talent recruitment efforts. At one point in his talk, Wang Hongwei displayed a slide explicitly inviting academics to apply to Tsinghua with the promise of funding for successful applicants ranging between roughly $139,00 and $417,000, footage shows.
His presentation also showcased examples of previously recruited academics belonging to the CCP and Chinese talent programs, like the Thousand Talents Plan, which Wang Hongwei joined in 2012, according to Tsinghua. China’s talent recruitment plans incentivize participants to “steal foreign technologies needed to advance China’s national, military, and economic goals,” the FBI has warned.
In May 2025, Wang Hongwei hired disgraced Harvard University professor Charles Lieber to work for Tsinghua, Chinese language news outlet Sohu reported. Lieber was convicted of crimes related to concealing his participation in the Thousand Talents Plan from U.S. government agencies funding his research in December 2021.
While a BUF flyer names the event’s moderator as Harvard professor Wang Kaiyuan, his alma mater, Peking University, further identifies him as an influential CCP member who served as the youngest Party Committee member in a bureau within China’s former Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power.
During that event, guest speakers and audience members adopted a dim view of the Trump administration’s policies, according to BUF’s LinkedIn post, and appeared to echo jargon and talking points from Beijing’s mouthpieces claiming the U.S. had “hindered academic cooperation,” “weakened the vitality” of cultural programs, and caused “trade frictions.”
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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