Elaine Chao, the wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell, accepted honorary and advisory titles from Communist Party-linked organizations when she served as secretary of labor under President George W. Bush and secretary of transportation under President Donald J. Trump, according to Chinese government and state-media records translated by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
DCNF identified at least four Chinese honorary and advisory titles since 2008. Three came from local affiliates of groups under the United Front Work Department, the Party’s overseas network for courting prominence, access, and talent. The United Front is not a civic club.
In December 2008, while still labor secretary, the Jiading branch of the China Overseas Friendship Association named Chao and her father honorary chairmen of its third council.
In October 2009, after she left Labor, the municipal government of Wuhan named her an international advisor. City notices cited her experience in foreign affairs and her value in attracting overseas talent. She was quoted saying she would do her best to fulfill the duties. The New York Times first reported the title in 2019. A 2009 Chinese report recorded the same titles.
From 2012 to 2017, the Jiading branch of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese listed Chao as an advisor and committee member of its fifth council. The Daily Caller, citing translations of Jiading local reports, says the district’s Overseas Friendship Association listed her in the same span as an advisor to its fourth council. Those years overlap her confirmation and the opening stretch of her tenure as transportation secretary.
Chao did not list the Chinese titles on her 2017 confirmation materials. DCNF reports the Senate questionnaire covered positions held in the previous ten years. In 2019, after the Times raised the Wuhan title and other Chinese accolades, a Transportation Department official at the time called the omission “an oversight.”
United Front websites in Jiading, her father’s hometown, ran Chao biographies for years and presented her as a distinguished native. In 2004, while she was labor secretary, two of those groups sent her a Christmas card. She replied in 2005 and enclosed an autographed photo.
In August 2008, during the Beijing Olympics, she and her father visited Jiading and met the same district Communist Party and United Front officials who named them honorary chairmen four months later. Both United Front-linked groups later put her on their councils.
James Chao was later listed as a Wuhan advisor as well. Her late sister, Angela Chao, was identified in 2019 as a director of COFA’s national organization and as a Wuhan advisor.
Patrick O’Connor, a spokesman for Chao and Foremost Group, says she never held a foreign government job and never served one. He called the story insulting and racist. He also said she was unaware of the Wuhan title, in part because she is not fluent in Chinese.
That claim is at odds with a May 2010 Ningbo interview. Her father told Chinese reporters that he and Xiaolan were both advisors to the Wuhan municipal government. She stood beside him and held the microphone. The scene is in contemporaneous print coverage and photographs.
Chao was born in Taipei and moved to the United States at eight. The Chao family and Foremost Group have long conducted business in Chinese. McConnell’s office declined to comment. Scrutiny returned this summer after Chao traveled to Beijing while McConnell was hospitalized.
Gordon Chang’s response was simpler. “No American, no matter how high and mighty, should have any ties with the Communist Party’s UFWD,” he told DCNF. “This organization is dedicated to destroying our country.”
Jacqueline Deal, an advisory board member of State Armor, said the United Front titles “should be disqualifying for dogcatcher, much less a Cabinet position.”
O’Connor says she did not know. Her father said she did. She was standing there. Those titles belonged on the 2017 form. They are public now.
