House Republicans are investigating Chinese foreign influence on U.S. campuses nationwide.
The ranking members on seven House committees sent a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Monday, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, noting that under her leadership, the Education Department “has sought to improve transparency and reduce reliance on foreign investment in U.S. higher education” and “recent revelations of China taking steps to suppress academic research into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of your efforts.”
The lawmakers wrote they “seek a better understanding of the Department’s efforts to address unreported foreign direct investment into the U.S. higher education system” as part of the House Republican effort “to investigate the Chinese government’s propaganda and cover-up campaign surrounding this pandemic.”
The letter was signed by Reps. Jim Jordan of the Oversight Committee, Virginia Foxx of the Education Committee, Michael Rogers of the Homeland Security Committee, Frank Lucas of the Technology Committee, Devin Nunes of the Intelligence Committee, Mac Thornberry of the Armed Services Committee, and Michael McCaul of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“For some time, we have been concerned about the potential for the Chinese government to use its strategic investments to turn American college campuses into indoctrination platforms for American students,” the GOP leaders said, noting that China’s efforts on U.S. campuses “bring into question whether U.S. institutions of higher education receiving federal taxpayer dollars should be allowed to accept funds from China, the CCP, or other affiliated organizations” because “the interests of the two nations appear to have diverged.”
The Republicans raised concerns about how “China has strategically invested in U.S. academia to attempt to steal confidential information and technology from U.S. companies, and even the U.S. government.” They said there was also a national security risk, as they pointed to foreign nations that “strategically invest” in schools and researchers that also receive Defense Department grants “in an attempt to steal sensitive U.S. military secrets and technology.”
The GOP letter comes a few days after it was revealed that the Department of Education was scrutinizing the University of Texas’s financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of its broadening investigation of foreign funding by China and other countries on U.S. campuses. Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community is investigating whether the novel coronavirus originated in a wet market or through an accidental release from the lab.
The Department of Education’s Foreign Gift and Contract Report website shows $15.76 billion in foreign funding on U.S. campuses between 2014 and 2019, including $1.17 billion from China. Both the Education Department and Justice Department prosecutors have gone after universities for concealing their foreign funding, including a high-profile arrest in January of a Harvard professor tied to China’s Wuhan University of Technology.
“This is about transparency,” DeVos said in February. “If colleges and universities are accepting foreign money and gifts, their students, donors, and taxpayers deserve to know how much and from whom.”
To “help us better understand the depth and breadth of foreign influence and investment in higher education” the Republicans asked the Education Department to provide, by next Monday, all information and communications between the agency and schools being scrutinized over their foreign funding as well as any preliminary findings from investigations into universities that misled about their foreign donation. They also asked for a staff-level briefing within a week.
A number of the signers provided statements to the Washington Examiner about the China letter, including Jordan, who said, “We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple” and that “we owe it to the American people to hold China accountable.”
Thornberry noted that “China’s strategic investment in our institutions of higher learning has long been a concern” especially, “where China appears to be targeting institutions doing research with the Department of Defense in an effort to obtain sensitive information.”
Lucas said that China surpassing the United States in key innovations “will have significant implications for our national security, for our economic competitiveness, and for our way of life” and so “we’re working with universities and federal agencies to protect our academic research enterprise so we can continue to maintain America’s scientific and technological leadership.”
Senate Republicans have been raising similar issues.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote a March letter to the more than 70 schools and universities in the U.S. that host Confucius Institutes, asking them to meet with federal law enforcement to get a “full understanding of the risks to both your institution and our national security” posed by Chinese influence on campus. “U.S. Government agencies, including within the Intelligence Community, assert that the Communist Chinese Government uses Confucius Institutes embedded in our academic institutions as a propaganda tool within the United States,” Grassley said.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman, released a 109-page bipartisan report in November concluding foreign countries “seek to exploit America’s openness to advance their own national interests” and “the most aggressive of them has been China.” It found China used its Thousand Talents Program over the past two decades to exploit access to U.S. research labs and academic institutions.
Late last month, Jonathan Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, argued China was likely attempting to steal coronavirus vaccine research from the U.S.
The DOJ’s China Initiative, launched in 2018, aims to combat both Chinese malign influence (ranging from cyberespionage to technology theft) and its Thousand Talents Program, which is aimed at stealing research. The department charged Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in a global racketeering scheme earlier this year.
Attorney General William Barr warned in April that “the Chinese are engaged in a full-court blitzkrieg of stealing American technology, trying to influence our political system, trying to steal secrets at our research universities and so forth — and we are focused on it.” The Justice Department has increased its scrutiny of China’s activities in recent years, charging an increased number of espionage cases, cracking down on China-based hacking schemes, and prosecuting efforts to steal trade secrets.
