Chinese billionaire and auto industry magnate Li Shufu is a senior Chinese Communist Party member who has explicitly devoted his career to spreading Chinese influence worldwide. According to data reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, he is also set to personally benefit from the Biden-Harris administration's latest taxpayer-funded initiative to boost electric vehicle manufacturing.
Li's firm, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, holds a $2.4 billion stake in heavy-duty vehicle manufacturer Volvo Group, making the Chinese firm the company's second-largest shareholder. The Volvo Group is set to receive a $208.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that will help keep some of the truckmaker's factories afloat.
Geely's stake is entirely made up of class-A shares, which are more exclusive and confer much greater voting power. In total, Geely has a 15 percent share of voting power, giving it sway in the Volvo Group's corporate decisions, such as electing board members or initiating mergers.
The value of that stake has surged 5.3 percent, or $119 million, since the morning of July 11, when the Biden-Harris administration announced the grant, which is designed to support the Volvo Group's transition to electric truck manufacturing across three facilities in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland.
The Energy Department's grant was earmarked under a new federal program designed to support "shuttered or at-risk auto manufacturing and assembly facilities." The designation suggests that, without the funding, the Volvo Group's three facilities may have been forced to close.
The taxpayer-funded action indicates that the Biden-Harris administration is broadly willing to pursue climate policies even if they indirectly benefit investors deeply enmeshed in the CCP apparatus. And it further reveals how intertwined the green energy industry is with companies and officials, like Li, who openly seek to spread Chinese influence around the world.
Li, also known as Eric Li, founded Geely in the 1980s and has since become heavily invested in the automotive industry—simultaneously growing into one of the largest companies in the world and making him one of the 10 wealthiest businessmen in China.
Li is the chairman of Volvo Car Group, in which Geely holds a 79 percent stake. That group is separate from but related to the Volvo Group. In 2014, Li was photographed giving Chinese president Xi Jinping a tour of a Volvo factory in Belgium alongside the Belgian king and queen.
Then-Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson remarked at the time that "steady growth in the Chinese market" is "a major part" of the company's transformation and that "by investing and growing in China, Volvo Cars makes a positive contribution to the development of the Chinese economy."
Li is a member of 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). He also served on the 10th, 11th, and 12th committees of the commission.
According to a U.S. government intelligence report published in 2018, the CPPCC is a "critical coordinating body" that brings together Chinese interest groups and is led by the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee. The CPPCC further coordinates China's United Front strategy, which seeks to spread Chinese influence overseas and ensure that foreign governments take actions supportive of Beijing's preferred policies.
Li was also elected to be a representative at the National People's Congress, which rubber-stamps the decisions of the Communist Party and in which served for a five-year stretch until 2023. He was a vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, a Communist Party business association that boosts China's Belt and Road Initiative, which itself seeks to spread Chinese influence worldwide through business development ventures.
During remarks delivered in 2022, Li called for further Chinese technological innovation "in order to fulfill people's aspirations for a better life, to fully build a modern socialist country, and to boldly explore and tirelessly strive for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," adding that Geely owed its worldwide success to "listening to the Party, following the Party, and engaging in business," Chinese news outlet National Business Daily reported, according to a translation provided for the Free Beacon.
Through his charity organization, Li donated nearly $700,000 to state-run Peking University's Li Dazhao Research Fund, named after a Chinese revolutionary who cofounded the Communist Party in the early 1920s.
Geely Group didn't respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for the Volvo Group distanced the company from Li and Geely, stating that the Energy Department grant would support American jobs and emphasizing that Geely would only benefit indirectly.
"The Volvo Group is very pleased to receive this grant, which will help the company and the 7,900 American workers in these three U.S. plants be even more competitive," Volvo Group spokesman John Mies told the Free Beacon. "Any benefit to Geely Holding Group will indeed be indirect, as they are a passive investor with no board representation or other position of influence."
"They will benefit no more than any of our other shareholders—the majority of whom are Swedish, and 23 percent of whom are American," Mies added.
And an Energy Department spokesman said the agency stands by its decision to award the grant to the Volvo Group, saying it was a part of the Biden-Harris administration's "investing in America agenda."
"Let's be clear: DOE is funding companies here in the USA, retaining and hiring American workers and investing in American manufacturing," the spokesman said in a statement. "Sustaining 7,900 existing union jobs in the U.S. while creating 295 new jobs—that is what investing in America looks like."
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