Scores of American higher education institutions, ranging from community colleges to the Ivy League, maintain partnerships with Chinese universities that public documents and the United States government have linked to the People’s Liberation Army. 

At least 60 U.S. colleges and universities advertise partnerships with Chinese universities that run major laboratories conducting research for the Chinese military, have been implicated in espionage schemes against American entities, and are considered among China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense,” a cohort of universities with deep ties to the PLA that observers have linked to technology theft. U.S. academic partnerships with these Chinese universities take several forms. Student exchange programs, joint degrees, shared research labs, training partnerships, and even satellite campuses are among the myriad agreements American universities have entered with institutions intertwined with the Chinese military.