The Mets Quietly Plan to Host Another Event with Pro-CCP Group — This Time without Chinese-Flag Baseball Caps

T he New York Mets plan to co-host an event with a Chinese Communist Party–tied group this week, after the annual tradition received significant criticism last year, National Review has learned.

The event, “An Evening of Chinese Culture,” is billed as a celebration of Chinese culture, but it is run by the Sino-American Friendship Association, a nonprofit group with extensive ties to Beijing’s influence operations in America.

Though a Mets spokesperson declined a request for comment, the Mets’ website confirms that the event will take place this Friday, and it identifies the Sino-American Friendship Association as its sponsor. A ticket-purchase page invites registrants to “festive pre-game programming” and a customized Mets cap.

The team is taking a subtler approach to the event this year after it triggered a social-media firestorm in August 2022, when it posted a tweet about that month’s “Evening of Chinese Culture.” Critics blasted the event because a promotional Mets cap for the event was emblazoned with a Chinese flag. There doesn’t appear to be a flag on this year’s cap.

“The New York Mets clearly realize that cozying up to the Chinese Communist Party is a PR problem,” Michael Sobolik, fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, told NR. “The Mets don’t seem to appreciate, though, that partnering with CCP united-front groups is also a national-security problem.”

The Sino-American Friendship Association’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party are no secret. As the outrage over last year’s event erupted, the Washington Post published an op-ed explaining the group’s links to the United Front Work Department — a powerful, well-funded arm of the CCP that seeks to influence nonparty members to promote Beijing’s aims within China and internationally.

SAFA’s leaders and board members, too, are affiliated with united-front organs. Honorary chairman Xikun Yuan is associated with the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the united front’s top convening organ, and members of the group have traveled to China for multiple meetings with the United Front Work Department.

The group’s advisory board is also stacked with former Chinese-government officials, including Bingde Zhou, former vice president of the state-run China News Service, and former Chinese consul general in New York Zhongwen Qu. SAFA did not respond to NR’s request for comment.

Some allies of prominent pro-democracy advocates targeted by the CCP see a double standard in professional sports teams’ willingness to speak out about perceived social-justice concerns in the U.S. while aligning with repressive foreign regimes.

“Once again it’s the marketing guys at a professional sports franchise, who want to assign moral courage in every ball caught, whiffing when it comes to the morals of not teaming up with the apologists for repressive regimes,” Mark Simon, a longtime confidant of jailed Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai, told NR.

“The lack of promotion of the event by the Mets indicates that, following last year’s media coverage, they know they are dealing with a united-front organization. So, in other words, they just don’t care,” Simon added.

Last year’s event featured the participation of a prominent Chinese-government official posted to New York. The Mets awarded consul general Huang Ping a “spirit award,” according to SAFA’s website. The Mets also granted that award last year to Vipp Jaswal, a New Jersey resident and registered foreign agent who had a contract with the Chinese consulate general in New York to promote Beijing’s narratives on the Olympics last year.

Huang, a CCP hard-liner, has used his perch in New York City to vigorously defend Beijing’s aggression against Taiwan and atrocities targeting Uyghurs and Tibetans. Last week, he posted a defense of the Chinese government’s Confucius Institutes program, which granted funds to U.S. universities for Chinese cultural and language instruction before many were shuttered over foreign-influence concerns.

The consulate general wouldn’t answer specific questions about its plans surrounding this year’s event, but it defended its long-standing ties to united-front-linked groups in the U.S., saying that “people-to-people exchanges play a significant role in China–U.S. relations” and characterizing those links as “normal cultural-exchange activities.”

“The Chinese consulate general in New York has always been cooperating with various sectors of society in its consular district in accordance with laws and regulations to fulfill its duty of promoting people-to-people exchanges and deepening people’s understanding of Chinese culture, which is conducive to stabilizing bilateral relationship and bringing it back to the right track,” the consulate general told NR.

Court documents recently filed by the Justice Department have tied the consulate general in New York to multiple espionage and interference schemes involving the harassment of Beijing’s critics on U.S. soil.

Linda Sun, the then–deputy chief of staff to New York governor Kathy Hochul, and Winnie Greco, the special adviser to New York City mayor Eric Adams, joined Huang at the game.

The offices of Hochul and Adams did not respond to NR’s requests for comment about their plans for this year.

“Of course, good-faith cultural exchanges are positive for everyone involved. But the CCP doesn’t operate in good faith. It’s deeply concerning that leading public servants in America still don’t understand this basic reality in 2023,” Sobolik said.

Other attendees of the 2022 “Evening of Chinese Culture” event included Mets senior vice president John Ricco, the Hong Kong government’s former top representative in New York Candy Nip, the North America director of the Chinese-government-run Xinhua News Agency Xingtang Xu, and China General Chamber of Commerce-U.S.A. chairman Wei Hu.