What if Humpty Dumpty Was a Chinese Spy?

November 16, 2021

What if Humpty Dumpty Was a Chinese Spy?

By Australian National Review

It’s no secret that the Chinese Communist Party (‘CCP’) has co-opted, through nefarious means, a diverse set of key US business and political elites. But the questions we are often asked are, understandably, “how do they do it?” and “can you show me tangible evidence?”

Like Jeffery Epstein himself prior to 2019, ‘brother’ Mark Epstein’s curious establishment, The Humpty Dumpty Institute (‘HDI,’ IRS EIN 13-4028567), is overlooked, either willfully or blissfully, by the mainstream, and has not yet really entered the collective consciousness of alternative conservative media, either. By way of quick background, ‘brother’ Mark was listed as a Director and main financier (alongside Michael Sonnenfeldt) of HDI on the most recently filed IRS Form 990 for a 501(c)(3) back in 2018. Incongruent with tax filing norms, HDI has not filed since FY2018 and we wait with baited breath for the FY2019 and FY2020 filings…whilst also noting that ‘brother’ Mark has been very recently scrubbed from the HDI website’s Board of Directors, on which he was listed until at least December 20, 2020.

If There Is Smoke, There Is Usually Fire

We are often judged, correctly, by the company we keep. Setting aside the surmised familial relationship between naughty Jeffrey and ‘brother’ Mark, the deep links between Marky-Mark’s HDI and the CCP are both stunning and relatively visible, though we note recent attempts and chess-board moves have been made to shroud the intimate lovefest between these two unlikely allies.

But first, let’s briefly zero-in on the connectivity between Epstein’s HDI and US Congress. Starting with the juicy morsel that is the erstwhile House Freedom Caucus Leader and President Trump’s one-time Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows (R-NC), who was appointed to the HDI Congressional Advisory Board in 2013 and served until at least April 2019. Strikingly, it seems Meadows was the only GOP member to have served during that period (see also HDI’s 2018 membership), currying favor with ‘brother’ Epstein and Democrat luminaries such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Adam Schiff, Al Green, mad-hatter Frederica Wilson, Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson-Lee. In total, (28) hard-left Democrats and (1) – repeat ONE – Conservative, Freedom Caucus ‘stalwart.’ It raises more questions than answers regarding the conduct of this supposed ‘Trump Loyalist’ and conservative freedom fighter. Interestingly, HDI’s current Chairman, a certain Sudanese named Dr. Al Khalafalla, felt compelled to recently repost a dated photo of himself with Meadows, along with ‘brother’ Mark back on June 22, 2021. Maybe it was just a #TBT – the same photo from September 16, 2014. For completeness and further illustrating the ongoing, current nature of Meadows’ relationship with HDI, and Dr. Al Khalafalla, here they are photographed together, along with Debbie Meadows, on September 6, 2020. For reasons unknown, as of July 19, 2020 Twitter has all of Dr. Khalafalla’s tweets marked “The following media contains potentially sensitive content.”

Appalachian trail hikes and adulterous affairs aside, the peculiar behavior of Mark Sanford (R-SC) beginning in late 2019 with his ‘doomed from the outset’ Presidential campaign always seemed forced, in our humble opinion. And, when a key political figure such as Sanford works hand-in-glove with CCP-aligned organizations, whether purposefully or not, their hand can indeed be forced. Like Meadows, Sanford also shares some strange bedfellows. It’s unclear if Sanford served on the HDI Congressional Advisory Board (though highly likely), but he did travel to Sudan with Dr. Al Khalafalla and a contingent of Democrats, including ‘bird-dogg’ Robert Creamer, back in November 2015. In Dr. Al Khalafalla’s own words on December 16, 2020 “The HDI organized four delegations from Congress to the Republic of Sudan. The mission of these HDI delegations was to create dialogue.” The ever-humble Dr. Al Khalafalla reminded the world of this close-knit relationship with Sanford again on December 16, 2020, again on April 26, 2020 and yet again on March 24, 2020. An additional photo posted December 26, 2016 of Sanford at the US Embassy in Sudan with HDI.

For succinctness, we shall temporarily turn the spotlight away from HDI’s Congressional (and John Bolton) links and toward the CCP and their local US organ, the Beijing-headquartered ‘Taihe Institute.’ A Think Tank are it’s people – so who are some of the Taihe Institute’s key people?

Lei Zhitian – Former Commissar and Major General in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
Gu Boping – Former Member of the CPPCC National Committee
Chen Hu – Former Editor-in-Chief of ‘World Military’ and Former Editor-in-Chief of ‘China Army’
Thorsten Jelinek – Senior Fellow at Taihe Institute and Associate Director at World Economic Forum (WEF)
Wang Haili – Group Captain of the People’s Liberation Army Airforce (PLAAF)
Quan Yong – Associate Dean of Graduate School at National Defence University of People’s Liberation Army
Xue Guoan – Executive Director of China Research Society of Sun Tzu’s Art of War
Yu Hongjun – Member of the 12^th CPPCC National Committee
Peng Bo – Vice Director of Cyberspace Administration of China (‘CAC’) – dropped from Taihe webpage in 2021
Zeng Hu – Former Director of Xinhua North America Regional Bureau
Chi Yufeng – Chairman and Founder of Perfect World Group

Upon establishing that the Taihe Institute is a CCP proxy – its people are Party members, that is clear – that has been activated in the USA, we sought to verify the connectivity of Taihe and HDI.

Shaking Hands With The Devil

HDI was visibly present in at least three of the four ‘Taihe Civilizations Forums’ in Beijing, 2017, 2019 and 2020. Following are additional photographs of HDI’s Executive Director (CEO equivalent), Joseph Merante – a former Deputy Chief of Mission to US Embassy to the Holy See – and HDI Associate Director, Morgan DeNicola, at the 2017 Taihe Global Civilizations Forum. DeNicola’s photoset also further capture the cozy relationship between HDI-Perfect World-Taihe. Note that Perfect World’s representatives Robert Hong Xiao and Ruby Wang were removed from the HDI website as Directors in early 2021 for reasons unknown. They appear, along with Mark Epstein, as Directors on page 7 of the most recent HDI IRS FY18 Form 990. Recall that Chi Yufeng, Perfect World’s Chairman and Founder is a Senior Fellow at the Taihe Institute. The supposition here is that Xiao and Wang were CCP plants within HDI, masquerading as corporate executives to those outside the HDI-Taihe-CCP orbit.

The Taihe forum itself bears the unnerving hallmarks of transhumanism, tackling questions such as ‘What kind of individual rights can we grant to human-like robots in the future?’ ‘Will artificial intelligence replace human labor?’ ‘Will human thought be captured in the future?’ ‘What does it mean to be human in the future?’ and ‘Can I live forever? per its promotional video. Apparently well beyond the purview of the HDI’s initial remit to ostensibly assist young children in poverty-stricken nations..

Whilst circumstantial and no smoking gun, there are multiple examples of Merante signaling his approval of Taihe Institute’s activities on LinkedIn, liking posts from the Taihe Institute, Xian (Alicia) Liu (Taihe’s Deputy Secretary-General), Binge Peng (Taihe’s Chairman) and Thorsten Jelinek (Taihe’s Europe Director and Senior Fellow). HDI also disseminates Taihe/CCP propaganda and talking points, such as its ‘Silk Road to the Stars’ press release.

On December 5 2020, at precisely 10:18AM our curiosity was further piqued about the true intentions of HDI and their CCP ties when a series of Tweets (which were masked by Twitter as being ‘Sensitive Content,’ despite being very innocuous from an optical standpoint) were published by HDI’s Chairman, Dr Al Khalafalla. These Tweets, which we translated from Arabic, described Khalafalla and Merante as being “In front of the house where Leader Mao was born in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, accompanied by Chinese State Councilor Zhang, Chinese businessman Michael Shi and Mayor of Shushan. The invitation to visit China was thanked (sic) by Councilor Zhang after our Institute (HDI) arranged for him to visit US Congress.” We became further interested in these relationships and the purpose of HDI’s mission to ‘Mao’s Birthplace’ when Al Khalafalla subsequently deleted the Tweets a few weeks later. But we kept the Tweet screengrab and copies of the photographs – see the Appendix below.

Alas, this was not the first dalliance of Merante and Al Khalafalla in the lion’s den – excluding the Taihe-CCP events referenced, other past, State-level, red-carpet, military parade welcomes for the two in Beijing. To us, the fusion between Mark Epstein’s HDI and CCP is clear – what happens next remains to be seen.