IN-DEPTH: Biden’s World Bank Pick Has Ties to Chinese Company That Owns TikTok

Ajay S. Banga, then president and CEO of Mastercard USA, attends the India Economic Summit in New Delhi, India, on Oct. 5, 2017. (Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the World Bank has business links with China.

Ajay Banga is currently the vice chairman at General Atlantic, a major investor of ByteDance. ByteDance is the Chinese company that owns TikTok, an app that has drawn heightened security concerns over its ties with the Chinese Communist Party.

During Banga’s tenure as CEO and president of Mastercard, the credit card company won approval in 2020 to join China’s $27 trillion payments market.

Additionally, Banga is a board member of Temasek, a state holding company of Singapore that has 22 percent of its investments in China.

The Treasury Department has defended Banga’s nomination, which requires the approval of the World Bank’s executive board. The position is a five-year term that is renewable. If confirmed, Banga would succeed David Malpass.

A department spokesperson told The Washington Examiner that “General Atlantic’s investment in ByteDance predates Banga’s work there.”

“From his tenure at Mastercard, Banga knows firsthand the importance of taking concrete measures to protect the data privacy of consumers,” added the spokesperson.

China Ties Alarming

Experts who spoke with The Epoch Times expressed alarm over the pick.

“If the nominee does indeed have serious ties to China then his nomination could be in trouble,” Desmond Lachman, who was deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Policy Development and Review Department and is currently a senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, said in an email.

Nonetheless, said Lachman, Banga’s “nomination was a blunder and reflected a poor vetting process” and it does not indicate “that Biden is getting soft on China.”

However, the pick reflects Biden going easy on China, according to human rights and national security lawyer Irina Tsukerman.

“The news of Ajay Banga having business ties to China is far from surprising, on the contrary they are fully in line with the Biden administration’s ideology and policies,” she said in an email. “Banga’s candidacy fits the pattern of other moves and nominations.”

Banga, though, was likely picked due to his business background, stated Dan Runde, the director of the Project on Prosperity and Development at the Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Runde was the head of partnerships at the International Finance Corporation, which is part of the World Bank’s umbrella organization, World Bank Group.

“I’m guessing that the Biden administration mainly picked him for a couple of reasons other than China. So they picked him because he’s an American citizen, that he has stature,” he said.

“Historically, there’s a significant bias toward what they describe as ‘bankers,’ people with some financial experience,” continued Runde, who cited Banga’s experience at Mastercard and General Atlantic. “And so they feel that this is a person who can do this role.”

‘Climate Change’ a Deciding Factor

That being said, remarked Runde, the administration “did not look at this pick through a China lens,” rather “through a series of other lenses and then, I think, more likely they looked at it through a lens of climate change.”

Indeed, climate change was the main factor behind Banga’s nomination, said Tsukerman.

“The Biden administration prioritizes climate change over all else, and is reluctant to let go of lucrative opportunities in doing business with China,” she said. “Actions speak louder than words.”

“Having someone who has a long relationship with China, not just on any issue, but specifically with respect to TikTok ... shows that Biden does not really mean his orientation towards confronting China’s threat, any more than he means it when he shuts down the FBI’s [China] focus group while China sets up police stations and intimidates Chinese diaspora in the U.S. in various cities.”

Runde noted that Banga was one of the two co-chairs of the Partnership for Central America, a public-private partnership that was launched in 2021 in concert with Vice President Kamala Harris and seeks to increase business investment in the region.

Banga was one of four co-chairs at CSIS on U.S. trade policy, noted Runde.

At the end of the day, said Runde, “he’s someone who’s very well-respected and well-known in Washington circles.”

Runde and Tsukerman expect the World Bank would maintain its status quo under Banga with regard to China, which the institution classifies as a developing nation.

“Biden is signaling not only business as usual but is proactively enabling China’s surveillance society vision and geopolitical ambitions, showing willingness even to prop up China’s floundering and increasingly isolationist economy through business, all in the name of climate change cooperation and cronyism,” Tsukerman said. “This is not only not serious, but is a deeply concerning position. The last thing [the] U.S. needs is the White House enabling and empowering U.S. adversaries who can’t be bothered to hide their belligerence to the U.S. and its concerns.”

Runde remarked that it should be expected that, under Banga, the World Bank will continue to lend funds to China and that the United States should pressure the institution to stop doing so.

“Do I think he’s going to be a person that’s going to, like, work to kind of squash engagement with China?” he added. “I’m guessing the answer is probably not.”