Exclusives

EXCLUSIVE: China Used Military-Linked Kindergarten To Cultivate Ties With Mitch McConnell’s Wife And In-Laws

[Wikimedia Commons/Public/Donghae Fang]

A child soldier lies dead in a marsh from starvation.

The Red Army pauses to mourn the little martyr for a moment before the Long March moves on — and the kindergarten play ends.

It is graduation day in Shanghai and Elaine Chao is in attendance.

The date is June 14, 2026 and in several hours Chao’s husband, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, will be rushed to a hospital on the other side of the globe.

Chao has been returning to this Shanghai kindergarten for decades, where she has repeatedly met with officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and an influence and intelligence arm called the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to Daily Caller News Foundation translations of dozens of Chinese government and state-media reports.

Beijing uses the UFWD to steer foreign policy and “gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Named in honor of Chao’s grandfather, the kindergarten is being used by a United Front arm as a stage to cultivate ties with Chao, documents show.

Chao — whose Chinese name is Zhao Xiaolan — has received at least four Chinese government positions since 2008, including a Wuhan municipal advisory post as well as roles within the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA) and the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC) — both of which are UFWD arms, the DCNF recently reported. Chao’s three UFWD arm positions partially overlapped with her tenure as President George W. Bush’s Department of Labor secretary and/or her service as Department of Transportation secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term.

Chao’s spokesperson, Patrick O’Connor, denied she “held a position with a foreign government” and told the DCNF “[w]e are not aware she has met with representatives of UFWD entities” after being sent photos showing Chao meeting with CCP and UFWD officials.

“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 added.

“Education has always been a primary focus for the family and its philanthropy. The secretary regularly visits schools in the U.S. and abroad,” O’Connor said in response to questions about why Chao had participated in events at the Shanghai kindergarten that variously featured Chinese military propaganda, CCP and UFWD officials. “This kindergarten is named after Dr. Chao’s father, and he has supported it for nearly four decades. The secretary was there to honor her father’s connection to the school, which is recognized as one of the best kindergartens in the region.”

Chao’s relationship with CCP and UFWD-affiliated organizations underscores how China intends to use political influence operations and information warfare to defeat the U.S. “without ever firing a shot,” Brandon Weichert, a geopolitical analyst and author of The Weichert Brief, told the DCNF.

“After more than 40 years of such operations, which have even influenced educational institutions in the U.S., it is clear that the United States has been completely outmaneuvered and overrun by the Chinese narrative,” Weichert said. “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.”

“We are on the slow, but steady path of being absorbed in China’s new empire without so much as any understanding that this is underway,” Weichert warned.

‘Little Soldiers’ 

The Chao family’s relationship with the Shanghai school dates back to its inception, when Chao’s father — James S.C. Chao, founder of shipping firm Foremost Group — donated $100,000 to the Malu Central Kindergarten in 1995. The school was subsequently renamed the Malu Yiren Kindergarten in honor of his father, Zhao Yiren — a Jiading primary school principal who believed in “saving the nation through education.”

Over the last three decades, Chao has repeatedly rubbed shoulders with CCP and UFWD officials at the kindergarten — all while her family has supported the school financially, according to Chinese government and state media reports.

The kindergarten has also held a wide-range of military-themed activities in recent years, including multiple combat training events — some of which have even been led by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) personnel.

In September 2025, for example, the kindergarten held a military-themed event for children between “0 and 3-years-old,” during which the “little soldiers” wielded toy rifles and grenades during “red games” like “Dodging Bombs,” “Advancing Tanks,” “Gunfight Game,” “Breaking Through The Blockade,” and “Carrying Stretchers,” according to the school and accompanying photos.

It is unclear when the school’s military-themed activities began, but children were already performing military songs at the kindergarten by 2019.

During the school’s graduation ceremony in June of that year, kindergarteners dressed in camouflage pointed their fingers like pistols on stage while performing the CCP propaganda song “Little Navy Sailor,” photos show.

“I am a little navy sailor, piloting a small gunboat,” the song begins. “If the enemy dares to invade — boom, boom, boom — we blast them to the ocean floor!”

The 2019 graduation also featured other CCP propaganda songs, such as “Song of the Red Star,” as well as the school’s own anthem: “Yiren One Family.”

That song had been composed by the Jiading branch of a United Front organization called the Zhigong Party, which not only co-sponsored the kindergarten’s 2019 graduation ceremony, but also operates as a formal partner of the school.

That partnership had begun nearly five years earlier.

‘We Are Still Chinese’ 

In November 2014, the kindergarten signed a “co-construction” agreement with Jiading’s Zhigong branch, setting the stage for the United Front arm to cultivate ties with the Chao family from within the school.

That signing ceremony was overseen by a local UFWD official, who reportedly expressed hope that the arrangement would produce a “triple-win” for “[Zhigong], the kindergarten and United Front work.”

The ceremony was capped off with the debut of the kindergarten’s new, Zhigong-composed anthem, “Yiren One Family,” which was named after Chao’s paternal grandfather.

Just six days after the deal was sealed, students sang the new anthem for Chao as she toured the kindergarten flanked by CCP and Zhigong officials on Nov. 13, 2014.

Also present that day was Jiading’s UFWD minister, who likewise headed the local COFA branch in which Chao was then reportedly serving as an advisor. That same UFWD minister oversaw the district’s ACFROC division, which had also appointed Chao as an advisor and committee member.

“Counterintelligence experts have long-warned that the UFWD seeks to cultivate relationships with political families and that they will use relationship conduits to gain access and influence outside of normal government channels,” Ina Mitchell, a Chinese intelligence expert, told the DCNF. “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.”

Approximately one year after the kindergarten and Zhigong began cooperating, Chao, her father, and her sister, Angela, returned again in October 2015 accompanied by local officials from the CCP and a Jiading UFWD division to unveil a statue of Chao’s grandfather. To commemorate the kindergarten’s 20th anniversary, the Chao family also presented the school with a check of $161,290.

“Although we sisters grew up in the U.S., our parents often reminded us: we are still Chinese,” Chao told Chinese state media during the visit.

Similar language appeared three months later in an unusually explicit Jiading UFWD announcement from January 2016, which detailed how the district’s COFA branch had conducted “overseas United Front work” related to Chao and others by highlighting their historical and familial roots.

“Particular emphasis was placed on using ‘sentiments of kinship, hometown and friendship’ as bonds to conduct overseas friendship work through multiple channels, levels and forms,” the UFWD announcement states. The document then notes that Chao had been among those invited to Jiading to meet with relatives and discuss “joint development.”

Nine months later, Chao and her father — whose Chinese name is Zhao Xicheng — returned to the kindergarten, where such “bonds” were on full display.

During that October 2016 return visit — which again included CCP, UFWD and Zhigong personnel — students reportedly addressed the pair as “Momma Xiaolan” and “Grandpa Xicheng” while they toured the kindergarten’s Chao family memorial and a garden honoring Chao’s late mother.

By then, Zhigong had also begun organizing unspecified events for the kindergarten — with the Chao family’s approval, a related Zhigong report reveals.

Although it remains unclear how much the Chao family knew about the United Front arm’s operations at the time, Zhigong’s motives were laid bare three years later when its Jiading branch was honored for having conducted “advanced” overseas liaison work in July 2019.

An accompanying UFWD report identified the branch’s top accomplishment as “maintaining long-term ties with Zhao Xiaolan’s family” and “co-construction” with the kindergarten.

They even had a name for Jiading’s winning formula: “Small Pairing, Big Politics.”

Spouses of U.S. lawmakers and Cabinet secretaries should not be affiliated with the UFWD or its arms, Scott McGregor, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police intelligence official and Chinese intelligence expert, told the DCNF.

“The broader United Front model works by identifying people with status, access, resources, expertise or influence and incorporating them into a relationship structure,” McGregor said. “Those individuals may be business leaders, academics, community representatives, 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.”