The Trump administration shone a light on the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign influence operations on U.S. campuses in a way that has not been done before, launching an effort that scrutinized foreign funding and cracked down on Chinese economic espionage on U.S. schools and universities nationwide. In part three of this series, China on Campus, the Washington Examiner takes a look at the Trump Education Department’s efforts pushing back against the CCP as big questions linger about how seriously the Biden Education Department will take the threat.
The Education Department is declining to weigh in on investigations into foreign funding on campuses initiated by the Trump administration and won’t comment on possible future inquiries either after Trump officials increased pressure on China.
The United States has ramped up its efforts in recent years to confront China, including the Justice Department’s China Initiative, the blacklisting of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei and other CCP-linked entities as national security threats, and a crackdown on Confucius Institutes, the Thousand Talents Program, and other Chinese influence operations. Thus far, though, the Biden Education Department has been largely mum on the issue. Miguel Cardona, President Joe Biden’s education secretary, did not bring up, nor was he asked about, Chinese influence operations during his February confirmation hearing, nor during a budget request appearance before the House on Wednesday.
The Trump Education Department launched a growing investigation beginning in 2019 into the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and other foreign funding on campuses nationwide, asking universities to hand over a host of documents about foreign gifts, contracts, and any connections with the CCP. The department eventually singled out 19 different universities by the time former President Donald Trump left office, but the inquiries might now be in limbo.
In August, the State Department designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center in Washington, D.C., as a “foreign mission” of the Chinese Communist Party, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos joined forces in October to warn that K-12 classrooms and universities nationwide are being targeted by Chinese influence operations.
The Washington Examiner asked the Education Department a range of questions about whether it would continue the Trump administration’s investigations into Chinese influence on U.S. campuses, what Cardona’s concerns about overseas influence at U.S. schools were, whether the department agreed the CIUSC is a foreign mission, and more, but the department did not provide specifics.
“Institutions of higher education are required to report to the Department on certain foreign gifts and contracts, and this is an important measure in ensuring transparency and preventing improper foreign influence. Under the Biden Administration, the Department has continued to carry out its statutory duties, including by collecting reports IHEs are required to file and making data publicly available,” an Education Department spokesperson said, pointing to the online portal. “The Department continues to assess how it can best address foreign influence issues in higher education while realizing the benefits of appropriately managed international partnerships. The Department declines to comment on active and potential investigations.”
When asked whether the Biden Education Department agreed with warnings in October 2020 from Pompeo and DeVos about the national security challenge posed by China on campuses, the spokesperson directed the Washington Examiner back to its initial statement.
HOW THE DOJ HAS BATTLED ‘NONTRADITIONAL ESPIONAGE’
The Education Department began increased scrutiny of foreign funding at U.S. campuses in 2019 by sending letters to six prominent universities, arguing it was possible the schools had not fully reported all of their overseas gifts and contracts, beginning a trend of asking schools about any ties to Huawei and Confucius Institutes. A letter to Georgetown University focused on funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, and China, with specific questions about the Georgetown Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues. A letter to Texas A&M University focused on Qatar and China, the letter received by Cornell University asked about Qatar and China, with specific questions about any funding going to the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Sciences and Education, and the Rutgers University letter asked about Qatar, Russia, and China. The letter to MIT was focused on funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, and China, while the letter received by the University of Maryland focused on Qatar, Russia, and China.
In 2020, seven more schools were added to the Education Department’s investigative list, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
In mid-January 2021, a few days before Biden was inaugurated, the Education Department sent investigative letters to six universities categorized as “Carnegie Research-1” institutions, meaning doctoral universities with “very high research activity,” scrutinizing foreign funding and overseas partnerships. The schools were Auburn University, Florida State University, Georgia State University, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.
The investigations into Alabama, Georgetown, and Texas A&M were closed by the Trump Education Department in January, but the status of the rest of those investigations is now unknown, and the Biden administration won’t say if it will continue the inquiries, let alone expand them to further campuses.
DeVos released a report in October that included details on the department’s wide-ranging investigations, including warnings that U.S. university partnerships with foreign adversaries, most notably China, could pose a risk to national security. The report said its investigations yielded “important and actionable information” and “catalyzed disclosure of $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign money.” The report warned about “China’s infiltration of American higher education.”
“For decades, foreign state and non-state actors have devoted significant resources to influence or control teaching and research, to the theft of intellectual property or even espionage, and to the use of American campuses as centers for propaganda operations and other projections of soft power,” the report noted.
The Education Department specifically warned that U.S. institutions of higher education “regularly work with foreign entities known or suspected to present national security risks” in a somewhat-redacted section focused mainly on the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on U.S. campuses. Investigators lamented that “institutions have directly entered into agreements with foreign governments, even repressive governments that are often hostile to American national security interests, such as China.”
The agency warned that “chief among these security concerns” is U.S. universities partnering with the “heavily state-influenced” Chinese technology giant Huawei, calling the Chinese state-funded entity “a potential tool of the Chinese government.”
The Education Department noted that one school “reported nearly $1 million of agreements” with Huawei, while another “has held nearly $11 million in contracts and agreements with Huawei since 2013, ranging from research agreements to donations for specific [redacted] research projects and programs.” The report warned that “many of these Huawei agreements and gifts strategically concerned sensitive topics like nuclear science or those related to competitive industries like robotics, semiconductors, and online cloud services” and that Huawei “made several hundred thousand dollars of donations towards [redacted] applied physics research” at one school and toward “cutting-edge research projects” at another.
The report noted other Chinese entities involved on U.S. campuses, including Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba contracting with one school “to develop new algorithms for crowd surveillance capabilities.” The report also noted one school’s relationship with the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and another school is affiliated with China’s HNA Corporation, which offered $15 million of scholarships to students through the HNA Group International “Talents Scholarship” Fund, noting that the company “was founded by a Communist Party official, and it currently operates its own Communist Party committee.”
The Education Department revealed last summer that schools have anonymized $8.4 billion in foreign money and that, since 2010, colleges and universities had “hidden the true source” of at least $600 million from China.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, released a bipartisan report in November 2019, concluding China used its Thousand Talents Program to exploit access to U.S. research labs and academic institutions. The FBI has deemed the Chinese effort to be a form of “nontraditional espionage.” The subcommittee released an initial report in February 2019 warning that “Confucius Institutes exist as one part of China’s broader, long-term strategy.”
Those reports spurred the Education Department into action.
Confucius Institutes are now collapsing in the U.S., falling from over 100 to just over a couple dozen in a few years thanks to pressure from the Trump administration and growing concern within the U.S. government about the challenge posed by Chinese influence at U.S. colleges and universities. The U.S. government considers Confucius Institutes to be part of the Chinese government’s numerous and varied foreign influence operations.
But just days after Biden took office, his administration quietly withdrew a proposed rule that would have required U.S. universities and K-12 schools with foreign exchange programs to disclose any financial ties or other connections to Confucius Institutes. The decision was met with swift backlash from Republicans.
The Trump administration made the last-minute proposal, “Establishing Requirement for Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certified Schools to Disclose Agreements with Confucius Institutes and Classrooms,” on New Year’s Eve, but before the rule made its way to the Federal Register or went into effect, the Biden administration withdrew it on Jan. 26, saying that the Office of Management and Budget’s interagency review of the draft rule hadn’t been completed by Inauguration Day and that it was withdrawn after White House chief of staff Ron Klain froze all regulatory processes.
State Department spokesman Ned Price declined in February to promise that the Biden administration would resubmit the rule but did say that “we’ll treat Confucius Institutes as part of our overall approach of how best to respond to China’s use of information operations.”
Portman told the Washington Examiner this week that “absent full transparency regarding how and where Confucius Institutes operate, Confucius Institutes should not operate in the United States and be allowed to influence American students,” noting that he had “urged President Biden not to withdraw a rule proposed by the previous Administration to require American schools and universities to disclose partnerships with Confucius Institutes and Classrooms” and saying “it was deeply disappointing and surprising that they decided to withdraw the rule considering the serious nature of China’s efforts to expand its influence operations inside the United States.”
When asked about the status of the proposed rule, a National Security Council spokesperson told the Washington Examiner: “We are addressing the Confucius Institutes as part of our broader efforts to increase transparency and stem influence efforts that undermine core democratic institutions and values.”
A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner it is “aware that many U.S. universities are choosing to end their affiliation with Confucius Institutes as more information becomes available about the Institutes’ day-to-day activities, including some whose activities represent possible regulatory violations of the University’s exchange visitor program.”
A Washington Examiner review revealed that Columbia University and other schools have quietly closed their institutes recently.
The spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the State Department “has ongoing concerns about the overseas influence and global propaganda activities of the PRC government, including through Confucius Institutes, that might affect academic freedom in the United States” and that “many of these malign activities lack transparency and attempt to hide or downplay their affiliation with the PRC government and the CCP.”
Two top Biden officials were briefly connected to China-on-campus controversies during their respective confirmation hearings earlier this year. Biden’s then-nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, admitted it was a “huge mistake” for her to deliver a paid speech in 2019 before Savannah State University’s since-closed Confucius Institute, claiming that she “strongly [supports] Congress’s crackdown on Confucius Institutes.” And then-nominee for CIA director, William Burns, pushed back on concerns about connections between the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which he ran, and the China-United States Exchange Foundation, part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front. He told the Senate he takes the danger posed by malign influence operations inside the U.S. seriously and ended the school’s relationship with the CCP-linked operation, also saying he would shut down any Confucius Institute if he ran a school.
Dr. Michael Lauer, the National Institutes of Health’s deputy director for extramural research, testified in April that the federal agency has identified more than 500 “scientists of concern” within federally funded academic institutions and research programs, adding NIH has “contacted more than 90 awardee institutions regarding concerns involving over 200 scientists.”
CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES COLLAPSE NATIONWIDE
NIH revealed in June 2020 that 54 scientists had lost their jobs over a failure to disclose financial ties to foreign governments. An overwhelming majority, 93%, of those cases involved funding from a Chinese institution, and at that time, the investigation targeted 189 scientists at 87 institutions. 76% of cases investigated had active NIH grants, with 41% having multiple active grants, and scientists failed to disclose a foreign grant in 70% of the cases and a Thousand Talents award in 54% of the cases. 82% of those investigated were male, 82% were of Asian descent, and 121 had been flagged by the FBI, while another 44 came under suspicion of their own institutions.
NIH’s Office of Extramural Research told the Washington Examiner this week “the U.S. government has growing concerns about inappropriate influence by foreign governments over federally funded research” and that “the majority (but not all) of these concerns about serious non-compliance behaviors with established policies and procedures are associated with undisclosed or misrepresented activities involving China.” The office added that “generally speaking, the trends remain the same today” as they were last summer.
The DOJ’s China Initiative, launched in 2018, has been shining the spotlight on the Chinese Communist Party’s coordinated efforts to steal research and technology from academic institutions across the country, with prosecutors mounting aggressive efforts over the past few years to crack down on Chinese malign influence at U.S. universities and focusing on rooting out academics concealing their ties to the People’s Liberation Army or China’s Thousand Talents Program.
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Perhaps the most notable such arrest was that of Dr. Charles Lieber, the former chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, who had received $15 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Pentagon over the years and who was charged in 2020 with alleged crimes including false statements and falsely reported income tax returns related to his role as a “strategic scientist” at the Wuhan University of Technology and his lucrative participation in Thousand Talents. A Washington Examiner review showed that similar arrests have taken place since 2020 at colleges all across the country.
