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 authoritarianism – 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 innovation. We also discuss the contingencies and ambivalences of the Foundation’s influence under rigid authoritarianism.