China used a military-linked Shanghai kindergarten named for Elaine Chao’s grandfather to cultivate long ties with Mitch McConnell’s wife and family, an investigation found.
On June 14, 2026, former Labor and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao attended a graduation ceremony at Malu Yiren Kindergarten in Shanghai’s Jiading area. Hours later, her husband, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, was rushed to a hospital on the other side of the globe.
The timing alone would have drawn notice. What a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found in Chinese government and state-media records is far more consequential: the school named for Chao’s grandfather has for years served as a venue for Chinese Communist Party and United Front Work Department outreach to the Chao family, complete with military-themed activities for small children and formal “co-construction” ties to a United Front organization.
Beijing’s United Front Work Department is the Party’s influence and intelligence arm. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has described how Beijing uses it to steer foreign policy and gain access to advanced foreign technology. Chinese records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation show local United Front officials treating sustained contact with Zhao Xiaolan, Elaine Chao, and her relatives as a measurable political win.
James S.C. Chao, Elaine Chao’s father and founder of the shipping firm Foremost Group, donated $100,000 to Malu Central Kindergarten in 1995. The school was later renamed Malu Yiren Kindergarten in honor of Zhao Yiren, Chao’s paternal grandfather, a Jiading primary school principal who preached “saving the nation through education.”
Family support continued. In October 2015, Elaine Chao, her father, and her sister Angela returned for a statue unveiling and presented a check for $161,290 marking the school’s 20th anniversary. Chao’s spokesperson later said the elder Chao had backed the kindergarten for nearly four decades and that Elaine Chao’s visits honored that connection.
Chinese officials framed the relationship differently. In November 2014, the kindergarten signed a “co-construction” agreement with the Jiading branch of the Zhigong Party, a United Front organization. A local United Front official oversaw the deal and spoke of a “triple-win” for Zhigong, the kindergarten, and United Front work. The school debuted an anthem titled “Yiren One Family.”
Six days after that agreement, on Nov. 13, 2014, Elaine Chao toured the kindergarten flanked by CCP and Zhigong officials. Students sang the new anthem. The Jiading United Front minister present also headed the local China Overseas Friendship Association branch and oversaw a division of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, both United Front arms.
By 2019, children at the school were performing military songs. At the June 2019 graduation, kindergarteners in camouflage pointed their fingers like pistols while performing “Little Navy Sailor,” a propaganda song that includes the lines, “I am a little navy sailor, piloting a small gunboat,” and “If the enemy dares to invade, boom, boom, boom, we blast them to the ocean floor!” Other numbers included “Song of the Red Star” and “Yiren One Family.” Zhigong co-sponsored the event.
The martial tone did not fade. In September 2025, the kindergarten held a military-themed event for children ages 0 to 3. “Little soldiers” carried toy rifles and grenades and played games labeled “Dodging Bombs,” “Advancing Tanks,” “Gunfight Game,” “Breaking Through The Blockade,” and “Carrying Stretchers.” Some combat training events in recent years were led by People’s Liberation Army personnel.
A July 2019 United Front report honored the Jiading Zhigong branch for “advanced” overseas liaison work. It identified the branch’s top accomplishment as “maintaining long-term ties with Zhao Xiaolan’s family” and “co-construction” with the kindergarten, a formula the report called “Small Pairing, Big Politics.”
Chinese records describe a pattern of visits. In October 2015, Chao family members appeared with CCP and Jiading United Front division officials. Elaine Chao told Chinese state media, “Although we sisters grew up in the U.S., our parents often reminded us: we are still Chinese.”
"Although we sisters grew up in the U.S., our parents often reminded us: we are still Chinese,"
In January 2016, a Jiading United Front announcement detailed overseas friendship work tied to Chao and stressed “sentiments of kinship, hometown and friendship” as bonds for multi-channel outreach. Chao was among those invited to Jiading.
In October 2016, Chao and her father returned again with CCP, United Front, and Zhigong personnel. Students reportedly addressed them as “Momma Xiaolan” and “Grandpa Xicheng.” They toured a Chao family memorial and a garden honoring Chao’s late mother. Related reporting said Zhigong organized events with family approval.
Since 2008, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s review of Chinese documents, Elaine Chao received at least four Chinese government-linked positions, including a Wuhan municipal advisory post and roles with the China Overseas Friendship Association and the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese. Three of those United Front-arm positions partially overlapped her U.S. Cabinet service under President George W. Bush and during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Chao spokesperson Patrick O’Connor rejected the thrust of the reporting. He denied she “held a position with a foreign government” and said, “[w]e are not aware she has met with representatives of UFWD entities.”
"Such a suggestion disregards her nearly five decades of faithful service to the United States and is both unfounded and deeply insulting, hurtful and racist,"
O’Connor tied the Shanghai trips to education philanthropy. “Education has always been a primary focus for the family and its philanthropy. The secretary regularly visits schools in the U.S. and abroad,” he said. He added that the kindergarten is named after James S.C. Chao’s father and that Elaine Chao “was there to honor her father’s connection to the school, which is recognized as one of the best kindergartens in the region.”
The same June 14, 2026, graduation day that placed Chao in Shanghai also brought fresh scrutiny of her husband’s health after he was hospitalized for what was described as an undisclosed issue, part of a longer stretch of absences and questions about his capacity to serve, including after Mitch McConnell returned to the Senate following a lengthy time away.
Independent specialists told the Daily Caller News Foundation the pattern fits a known United Front method: build long-term relationships with people who hold status, access, or influence, often through cultural or philanthropic channels.
Geopolitical analyst Brandon Weichert said the scale of the effort is the point.
"That even people like the wife of former Republican Party Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a former cabinet member herself, has become the face of a quiet campaign to influence the hearts and minds shows you how prolific, and profligate, the Chinese campaign has been."
Weichert added that after more than 40 years of such operations, “the United States has been completely outmaneuvered and overrun by the Chinese narrative,” and that America is “on the slow, but steady path of being absorbed in China’s new empire without so much as any understanding that this is underway.”
Chinese intelligence expert Ina Mitchell said counterintelligence professionals have long warned that the United Front Work Department “seeks to cultivate relationships with political families” and will use “relationship conduits to gain access and influence outside of normal government channels.”
"Even though the spouse of a sitting senator is considered a private citizen, such an intimate connection, especially where the partner has significant influence over policy affecting China, raises legitimate questions about access, intent, disclosure and whether such contacts could indirectly shape or be perceived as shaping U.S. policy."
Former Royal Canadian Mounted Police intelligence official Scott McGregor described the model in structural terms. The United Front, he said, works by identifying people with “status, access, resources, expertise or influence and incorporating them into a relationship structure.” Those people may be business leaders, academics, former officials, or political figures. “Some may knowingly support CCP objectives; others may regard their participation as cultural, commercial or ceremonial. The strategic value to Beijing may exist regardless of the individual’s subjective intent.”
McGregor’s warning lands harder against the Senate backdrop already surrounding McConnell, from C-SPAN footage of his limited movement before earlier medical scares to pressure from figures who have urged full transparency about his fitness for office.
The Chinese documents establish meetings, ceremonies, a formal school partnership with a United Front organization, military-themed programming for young children, and United Front officials boasting of long-term ties to Chao’s family. They also show Chao receiving Chinese advisory roles after 2008.
What remains unclear is how much the Chao family understood about the United Front arm’s operations at each stage, the full formal titles and duties of each Chinese post, and whether every counterpart was recognized at the time as United Front-linked. O’Connor says the family is not aware of meetings with UFWD entity representatives and casts the visits as education-focused philanthropy rooted in a grandfather’s legacy.
United Front paperwork from Jiading is less sentimental. It logged kinship outreach, a co-construction pact, and “Small Pairing, Big Politics” as work product. While Washington debated McConnell’s prolonged leave and even whether he should prove his fitness to hold his seat, Chinese officials had already spent years treating access to his household as a line item in overseas liaison success.
Americans watching the Senate’s own transparency fights, including calls for McConnell to come clean about his health and criticism over drawing full pay during extended time away, have every reason to ask the same standard of clarity about elite contact with Beijing’s influence machinery.
China plays the long game through schools, surnames, and ceremonies; U.S. leaders who shrug at that method hand the Party time it does not deserve.