Skip to content

Favorable Reports in Chinese Media on 101-year-old David Rockefeller, Who Carried on His Family’s Philanthropy

On March 22, Xinhua News Agency published a lengthy report on David Rockefeller, the youngest of his generation of the Rockefeller family. Xinhua reported that renowned U.S. banker David Rockefeller passed away, at age 101, at his Pocantico Hills home in New York. The report quoted Fraser P. Seitel, spokesperson for the Rockefeller family as saying that he died peacefully in his sleep.

Xinhua went on to review what it called “the legendary life” of David Rockefeller. The review included his privileged upbringing, his education at the University of Chicago and at the London School of Economics and Political Science, his internship with New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, his stewardship at Chase Manhattan Bank, and his declining to take the position of Treasury Secretary, first during the Nixon years, and the second time at the invitation of Jimmy Carter.

The reported cited praise from first ladies Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton in memory of David Rockefeller for his philanthropy and other achievements.

At midnight on Mar 20, Phoenix Satellite Television, a Hong Kong-based broadcaster which serves China and other countries, broadcast a documentary on the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller, grandfather of David Rockefeller. The documentary first aired in 2014. It commended U.S. constraint after signing the 1900 protocol which ended the warring dispute between 11 Western countries and the Qing Dynasty government in Beijing. The Phoenix documentary characterized the U.S. as a young, progressive country, which led the world by producing one super wealthy industrialist after another and one great invention after another.

John D. Rockefeller, according to the full transcript of the documentary, was then the wealthiest man in the world and a poster boy for that gilded age. He built two kingdoms in his life: one in petroleum and one in philanthropy. The Peking Union Medical College Hospital was established in 1917 with funding from John D. and his son. As Phoenix put it, it carried the aspirations for modern medical science across the Pacific.

Global Times, a newspaper known for editorials with a populist leaning, was among the earliest to profile David Rockefeller’s life achievements. It carried a report commemorating the Rockefeller family’s contribution to modern medicine science in China, attributed directly to Peking Union Medical College Hospital’s website, as well a series of pictures of David Rockefeller, attributed to china.com.cn, a news portal affiliated with the State Council Information Office.

Sources: Xinhua News Agency, March 22, 2017
http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2017-03/22/c_129514811.htm
Phoenix Satellite Television, March 20, 2017
http://news.ifeng.com/a/20170320/50802581_0.shtml
Global Times, March 21, 2017
http://world.huanqiu.com/article/2017-03/10349407.html
Global Times, March 21, 2017
http://www.huanqiu.com/www/mobilenews/hot/2017-03/10346542.html
Global Times, March 20, 2017
http://world.huanqiu.com/exclusive/2017-03/10344409.html