In an effort to protect America’s sovereignty over its higher education system, Congress urged Columbia University to cut its ties to communist China and adopt a stricter vetting process for its donors, students, and partners.
“Your university and its student groups to discontinue any exchange programs that are supported by entities with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and commit to a rigorous review of foreign funding of student groups,” House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) wrote to Columbia University President Claire Shipman.
CONGRESS MOVES TO COUNTER CHINA’S PROPAGANDA
“I consider CCP-affiliated entities’ malign influence campaigns that exploit our academic institutions and students through United Front organizations and its insidious strategy of co-option, coercion, and concealment to be serious threats to America.”
The chairman’s letter comes after Columbia embraced the Chinese student organization Greater China Initiative, which will host a trip in January 2026 for the university’s students in Beijing.
The trip is available for students of Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and is sponsored by Columbia’s Chinese partner, the Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and cosponsored by the China United States Exchange Foundation.
The organization was identified by a Senate Committee on Intelligence hearing as “a united front-linked organization that advances Chinese Communist Party interests.
As stated in a memo from the House Select Committee on the CCP in 2023, the CUSEF operates in the U.S. because it aims to “shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward the PRC and to gain access to advanced foreign technology.”
In order to execute its mission, CUSEF needed a host and chose university campuses as vulnerable and easy targets.
There is little room to rebut the claim that CUSEF operates on behalf of the CCP, too. The founder and chairman emeritus of CUSEF, Tung Chee-hwa, was vice chairman of the CPPCC from 2005 to 2023 and is a proxy for the CCP in Hong Kong.
“The CUSEF is guided by officials in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a key United Front forum designed to advance CCP objectives in and beyond the PRC through overt and covert political mobilization,” Moolenaar added in his letter.
THE NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS FUNDING ACADEMIC DECLINE
The letter he sent to Columbia adds to the long list of efforts to close China’s inroads into America’s higher education.
Under Moolenaar, the committee has already enacted legislation such as the DETERRENCE ACT, which roots out China’s influence in higher education, singles out universities with ties and partnerships with communist China, identifies Chinese donors in academia, and advocates a sovereign higher education system.
