Red Money, Blue Rhetoric: J. Peter Pham’s Ivanhoe Atlantic Liberia Hustle

J. Peter Pharm

As Liberian President Joseph Boakai prepares for a high-stakes meeting in Morocco with Dr. J. Peter Pham, chairman of Delaware-based mining firm Ivanhoe Atlantic (formerly HPX), the political noise around the deal is reaching a breaking point. Pham is driving a diplomatic and media push that casts his company’s bid for control of the Yekepa–Buchanan rail and port corridor as a core U.S. interest—a supposed barrier to Chinese power in West Africa.

Our investigation found a far messier and more troubling reality. The man presenting himself as a defender of American commercial integrity against Chinese influence is, in fact, fronting for a company tied into the very state-linked Chinese capital he denounces. This looks less like grand strategy and more like a refined corporate hustle that exploits weak oversight over Africa policy for private gain.

The Crafted Pham Persona: A Diplomatic Facade

Pham’s influence rests on a carefully staged image as an indispensable Africa hand and seasoned diplomat. As Yahsin Ahmed argued in a July 2025 critique on Africa Is a Country, Pham—a Vietnamese American former tenured professor and ex–U.S. Special Envoy—is a “clearest example” of the kind of impostor who flourishes in the Africa policy arena. That critique points to a sharp gap between how he is sold and what he has actually delivered.

His roughly two-year stint as U.S. Special Envoy has been described by critics as a low-profile, largely symbolic job earned through political networking rather than hard diplomatic results. Questions also shadow his academic record: the oft-repeated claim of “over a dozen” books leans heavily on self-published work and output that some scholars dismiss as shallow, suggesting a career built more on the absence of scrutiny than on serious scholarship.

Despite this, Pham has turned these affiliations into real political leverage. This month, he leaned on a photo OP with the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) to amplify Ivanhoe Atlantic’s message. In a November 2025 social media post, he thanked HFAC Chairman Rep. Brian Mast for alleged backing of “multi-user, independently-operated infrastructure,” projecting formal U.S. institutional support for Ivanhoe’s rail-and-port ambitions in Liberia.

Around the same time, Mast reportedly restated his unease about supporting any firm with direct or indirect ties to the Chinese Communist Party, casting a long shadow over Pham’s narrative and injecting a critical note of official skepticism into the supposed "U.S. endorsement."

The Chinese Stake in a “U.S.” Company

The core of Pham’s trip to meet Boakai is simple: convince him that resisting Ivanhoe Atlantic’s rail demand means defying Washington. That argument depends on pushing aside the heavy Chinese footprint inside the company’s wider ownership and operating structure.

Ivanhoe Atlantic is part of a network built by mining billionaire Robert Friedland, whose Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. is deeply financed by Chinese state-linked entities. China CITIC Bank Corporation, a Beijing-based institution backed by the CCP, holds roughly 22 percent of Ivanhoe Mines. Zijin Mining Group, a Hong Kong–listed giant with documented links to the party-state, owns about 12 percent. In practice, the founder’s core corporate vehicle is heavily reliant on Chinese state capital, giving Beijing's interests a significant, if indirect, seat at the table.

The ties run beyond share registers. Two Ivanhoe Atlantic directors, Kenneth Lau and Patrick Tsang, are associated with Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, one of Hong Kong’s most powerful conglomerates with its own long record of political and commercial ties in China.

Furthermore, a 2021 pre-feasibility study for the Nimba iron ore project’s infrastructure relied on major Chinese engineering firms, including China Harbour Engineering Company Limited and China Railway Liuyuan Group Co. Ltd., as key contractors.

Pham has built his public brand around warning of Chinese encroachment in African infrastructure and critical minerals. He now chairs a company whose funding base, boardroom, and technical partners are profoundly intertwined with Chinese state and commercial power. This represents a staggering commercial contradiction: a blue rhetoric masking red capital.

The Revolving Door on Full Display

For President Boakai, Pham’s mission is a textbook example of the Washington revolving door at its most dangerous. Pham moved directly from a senior U.S. envoy portfolio—where he had access to classified intelligence and strategic thinking on the same West African supply chains now at issue—straight into a private role as chairman of a firm seeking dominance over that corridor.

He leverages his former government title and contact list to wrap an unrealistic, structurally conflicted venture in the non-negotiable language of U.S. national security. The message to Boakai is blunt but misleading: approve Ivanhoe or risk alienating Washington.

Boakai has to know: Standing up to Ivanhoe Atlantic is not an act of hostility toward the United States. It is an act of basic self-defense for Liberia against a complex, compromised corporate lobby that blends American branding, Chinese-linked capital, and Washington insider privilege.

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