After Chinese nationals were prosecuted for stealing American seeds and smuggling biological materials into U.S. laboratories, a new Chinese government document revealed a PRC provincial delegation was slated to enter a USDA germplasm facility with help from an American organization tied to a CCP United Front influence network.
The April 8 notice, quietly published by the Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, disclosed that researcher Cheng Hong was scheduled to travel to the United States from May 11 to May 16, 2026 as part of an official delegation organized by the provincial government’s Foreign Affairs Office.
Buried beneath language about “agricultural exchanges and friendships” was the real destination.
The delegation would “visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s seed germplasm resource bank” and “carry out the utilization and cooperation of white melon germplasm resources.”
The Chinese government also named the American organization helping facilitate the trip: the U.S.-China Green Institute.
Curiously, the U.S.-China Green Institute does not appear to have publicized the USDA visit on its own website, despite extensively promoting its China trips, agricultural partnerships, and meetings with Chinese officials.
The Chinese government disclosed it instead.
The U.S.-China Green Institute was founded by an extraordinary lineup of Americans with deep connections to the Chinese Communist Party and its foreign espionage and propaganda fronts.
Former Iowa Governor and former U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad serves as Founder & Chairman. Former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore David Adelman is Founder & Vice President. Jonathan Krane, founder of China-focused investment manager KraneShares, is Founder & President.
Krane’s financial ties are especially notable.
Krane Funds Advisors was majority owned by CICC USA, which SEC filings identified as indirectly owned by China Investment Corporation, China’s sovereign wealth fund. The filing stated that Krane employees had agreed to purchase CICC’s stake, but as of March 31, 2026, just weeks before the planned delegation, the Chinese ownership remained in place.
Then there’s Branstad.
Beijing has celebrated the former governor as an “old friend” of Xi Jinping, dating their relationship to Xi’s 1985 visit to Iowa. After leaving government, Branstad continued lending his name and stature to groups working to expand China’s foothold across America’s agricultural heartland.
He repeatedly appeared with the United States Heartland China Association, or USHCA, including at its 2022 agricultural dialogue alongside Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang. USHCA established secret backchannels with America politicians and agriculture officials to mainstream policies advancing Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland. Programming has included officials from CPAFFC — a top-tier political warfare branch of the Chinese Communist Party — advocating for “technology transfer.”
The U.S.-China Green Institute’s relationship with Beijing’s influence apparatus was not indirect.
In 2024, the organization announced what it called a “historic” Memorandum of Understanding with the World Food Prize Foundation and the China Friendship Foundation for Peace and Development, or CFFPD.
The agreement promised deeper agricultural cooperation and programs to “conduct exchange programs for government officials, students, and industry leaders.”
The Green Institute itself acknowledged that CFFPD was established by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, or CPAFFC, and remains “overseen by the CPAFFC.”
That matters because U.S. counterintelligence officials have specifically warned about CPAFFC.
The State Department has described the organization as “tasked with co-opting subnational governments” and said it has sought to “directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.”
That is the United Front model in practice:
cultivate governors, universities, business leaders, farmers, scientists, and former officials through organizations branded around “friendship,” “dialogue,” and “exchange,” then use those relationships to expand Beijing’s access inside America.
In this case, the access apparently reached USDA.
The danger is hardly hypothetical.
Chinese national Mo Hailong pleaded guilty for participating in a conspiracy to steal proprietary corn seeds developed by DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto and transport them to China. Federal prosecutors warned that agricultural trade-secret theft posed a “grave threat to our national economic security.”
In 2025, federal prosecutors also charged Chinese nationals in cases involving biological materials smuggled into the United States for work connected to University of Michigan laboratories. One defendant pleaded guilty to smuggling Fusarium graminearum and lying to investigators.
The Chinese notice did not name the USDA facility, but the itinerary routed the delegation through Des Moines and said it planned to pursue cooperation involving melon germplasm.
USDA operates the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station in Ames, Iowa, which maintains USDA’s cucumber and melon germplasm collection as part of the National Plant Germplasm System.
These facilities are not simply warehouses full of seeds.
They preserve the genetic material scientists use to study and develop crop varieties, including traits involving disease resistance, productivity, and environmental tolerance. USDA describes the Ames site as a secure research facility maintaining genetically diverse crop material for crop improvement and product development.
And the Chinese document did not merely describe a tour.
It said the delegation planned to “carry out the utilization and cooperation of white melon germplasm resources.”
The American counterparts responsible for organizing this tour curiously made no public mention of the visit.
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