Philanthropic foundations are important agents of global policy transfer. While scholars have explored foundations’ policy roles in a range of contexts, we know relatively little about how they transfer policies and instigate institutional change under rigid authoritari- anism – fields in which the state maintains centralized control and excludes other actors. This paper seeks to bridge this gap through analysis of a case study of the Ford Foundation’s grantmaking in the Chinese family planning field during a period of rigid authoritarian control (1991-2005). We find the Foundation stimulated the transfer of the Western “reproductive health” policy through two mechanisms: 1) incentivising elite researchers to conduct scientific research on rural women that was previously left “undone”; and 2) partnering with peripheral state actors for localised experimentations and gradually gaining access to central policymakers to encourage national policy inno- vation. We also discuss the contingencies and ambivalences of the Foundation’s influence under rigid authoritarianism.