Inside the Shanghai Consultancy at the Center of Neville Roy Singham’s Tangled Web

A Breitbart News Foundation (BNF) review of corporate records has uncovered even closer than previously reported ties between Star Stream, the Shanghai-based consulting firm founded by tech-billionaire turned left-wing agitator Neville Roy Singham, and Maku, a Chinese media firm that the New York Times has identified as specializing in propaganda for the Chinese communist regime.

For U.S. lawmakers, including then-Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), who have called for Singham to be investigated as a possible Chinese foreign agent, establishing any financial relationship between Star Stream and Maku might hold some clues for further investigative action.

As noted in our prior BNF report on Singham, the tech mogul made his fortune through Thoughtworks, the software consulting company that he founded in 1993 and sold (allegedly) in 2017, the same year that he married Code Pink co-founder and radical left activist Jodie Evans. The couple share a passion for radical political action, which Singham’s wealth has helped fund. In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Joel Finkelstein, the co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, estimated that Singham has given over $100 million to various far-left organizations, including groups behind the current anti-ICE protests.

In 2019, Singham settled in Shanghai and founded a consulting firm whose official name in Mandarin is 上海洛维星商务咨询有限公司. That name in Mandarin can be translated into English in multiple ways, making tracking the firm’s online footprint challenging. The most common English translation of the company’s name is “Star Stream Consulting,” but English-language translation software sometimes renders the company’s name as ‘Shanghai Luoweixing” or “Shanghai Lovistar.”

Official Chinese corporate records confirm that Singham launched Star Stream in 2019.

BNF’s research can now provide a fuller picture of just how deep the connections are between Singham’s Star Stream and Maku Cultural Communications (or Maku Group), another Shanghai-based media firm that specializes in producing Chinese Communist Party propaganda content intended for foreign audiences.

Maku was launched in September 2020, only one year after Singham launched Star Stream. Maku’s stated goal is to “tell China’s story well” – a phrase which, according to the New York Times, is commonly used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to describe foreign propaganda efforts. The company describes its work as creating “text, audio, and video content” for “global mass media networks and think tanks” with the aim to “showcase China’s social life, cultural values, development philosophies, and construction methods, thereby enhancing global understanding of China,” largely by leveraging digital media.

Like Maku, Star Stream’s website also uses buzz words about sharing “China’s story” that, per the New York Times, commonly signifies CCP propaganda work. The company’s website explains that Singham “actively and enthusiastically shares China’s story with international friends, helping them better understand China and engage in various forms of cooperation with China.” Star Stream’s recruiting materials describe its work in policy research and journalism as aimed at “socially beneficial” projects. Star Steam is not shy about associating itself with the CCP. In 2021, for example, the firm’s employees attended an event honoring the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary, where staff performed an instrumental rendition of the anthem “Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China.”

That Star Stream and Maku share the same goals is perhaps not surprising considering the significant cross-over between the two companies’ personnel. Chinese corporate records show that Singham’s Star Stream shares key staff with Maku.

Take, for example, Jie Xiong, an executive from Singham’s former company, Thoughtworks. Jie Xiong’s name, which often appears as “Bear Festival” in English translation software, is listed on Star Stream’s corporate records as the company’s “Supervisor.” He was also identified in a press release as Maku’s co-founder and CEO. Furthermore, both Jie Xiong and Zhou Yihua, who was identified in a press release as Star Stream’s internal Communist Party chair, are listed as Maku shareholders in Chinese corporate records. Zhou Yihua is also listed in corporate records as Maku’s executive director.

BNF has also discovered that the two companies not only share an office location, as previously reported, but literally share the same floor in seemingly adjoining suites. Both Star Stream and Maku list the 18th floor of a Shanghai office tower as their contact addresses. A Chinese 2021 profile of Maku’s remodeling of the space shows Star Stream’s logo next to Maku’s in the lobby of the office suite.

Shared personnel and office location are not Singham’s only touch points with Maku. IRS records show that over $5 million has flowed from Singham-linked U.S. nonprofits to Maku. The Justice and Education Fund—funded by Singham, with his wife Jodie Evans listed as the nonprofit’s president on filings—sent $1,769,238 to Maku in 2021 and $2,298,297 in 2022. In 2023, it paid another $1,879,888 to Maku for “production of online news program.” The People’s Support Foundation, another nonprofit helmed by Evans, sent $142,154 to Maku for “consulting.”

In 2020, the same year Maku was established, Singham began emailing his associates to promote Dongsheng News, a multi-language media startup that Singham described in these emails as providing “unique progressive coverage of China that has been sadly missing.” According to the New York Times, Dongsheng shares an address with the People’s Forum, a Singham-funded organization deeply involved in radical progressive organizing in the United States. As noted in BNF’s prior reporting on Singham, the People’s Forum has been at the forefront of the anti-Israeli protest movement following the October 7 Hamas terror attack.

Another nonprofit funded by Singham called the TriContinental Institute, which itself employs the executive director of the People’s Forum as a researcher, has paid Maku $165,592 for “research, analysis, and translation services.” Sure enough, TriContinental itself has collaborated with Dongsheng on a number of projects, including an online newsletter and an English-language version of a Chinese political journal.

What do all of these intertwined companies, shared personnel and office location, and non-profit funding sources have in common? Two things for sure: Singham and the pushing of CCP propaganda and talking points.

Under U.S. current law, anyone “supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized” by foreign powers—like a “government of a foreign country or a foreign political party”—must register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. Strict disclosure rules apply. News outlets are exempted, as long as they are not “owned, directed, supervised, controlled, subsidized, or financed” by such principals and their policies remain independent.

Singham and Star Stream did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Jacob McLeod is a researcher and writer focusing primarily on corruption in politics.

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