The
United States
government gave over $100,000 in
COVID-19
relief to an American nonprofit group affiliated with a university in
China
that is closely linked to the country’s military, records show.
Tsinghua Gix Institute North America, a Washington state charity, received $103,700 through the Small Business Administration’s
Paycheck Protection Program
, the government’s COVID-19 loan program that has been rife with fraud, grant
records
show. The nonprofit group supports a partnership between the University of Washington and the
Beijing
-based Tsinghua University, which conducts research for China’s
military
and is bankrolled by the country’s Ministry of Education, according to multiple reports.
“America’s China policy is receiving something it successfully avoided for over three decades: scrutiny,” Michael Sobolik, a fellow in Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, a think tank, told the Washington Examiner. “The more we look into government programs that fund ongoing engagement with the Chinese Communist Party, the clearer our problematic entanglements with Beijing become.”
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FUNDING UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP WITH CHINESE-RUN SCHOOL
Tsinghua University, a public institution that counts Chinese President
Xi Jinping
as an alumnus, is under the supervision of China’s State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense and trains students on nuclear weapons,
according
to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank. The university has carried out cyberattacks on behalf of China’s government and maintains a Chinese Communist Party Committee that regularly convenes to strategize on furthering party goals and keeping Tsinghua “in accordance with President Xi’s hopes,” according to the institute and the university’s
website
.
In 2015, Tsinghua University and the University of Washington launched the Global Innovation Exchange, which marked “the first time a Chinese research university has established a physical presence in the United States,” a press release
shows
. The partnership prepares “the next generation of Chinese and American innovators and entrepreneurs” by hosting educational programs for high school, undergraduate, and master’s students, according to Tsinghua Gix Institute North America’s 2020 tax
forms
and a press release.
Microsoft, which has come under congressional
scrutiny
for its artificial intelligence
research
in China, contributed $40 million to the program, the company
said
in June 2015. The partnership develops courses combining Tsinghua’s Master of Science in Engineering, Data Science, and Information Technology and the University of Washington’s Master of Science in Technology Innovation,
according
to a 2020 Tsinghua University blog post.
The Paycheck Protection Program, also known as PPP, was authorized by former President
Donald Trump
as part of the $2.2 trillion March 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. PPP allocated $953 billion in aid for nonprofit groups, businesses, and other entities — with the aim of helping U.S. citizens keep afloat amid the economic turmoil associated with the spread of COVID-19. Tens of billions of dollars have been illegally siphoned from PPP, leading to many prosecutors
deeming
it the biggest
fraud
in U.S. history.
Tsinghua Gix Institute North America was approved for its $103,700 loan in April 2020,
disclosures
show. Like most of the taxpayer-backed loans, it was forgiven. The lender was the Utah-based Zions Bank, which processed various COVID-19-related loan applications, according to disclosures.
The institute pulled in roughly $477,000 in revenue in 2020, according to its most recent publicly available tax forms. Its CEO and president is Qiang Wan, vice dean of operations at the Tsinghua GIX Institute in Beijing, while its assistant dean is Yuntao Wang, a computer science and technology professor at Tsinghua University, according to the institute’s
website
.
There is one entry on the institute’s tax forms under Schedule B, which is where groups may disclose contributors in a given fiscal year, the Washington Examiner found. However, the entry lists “restricted” in all capital letters under the amount of money, and no third-party entity is reported.
“Keeping small businesses afloat during a pandemic is a worthwhile goal, but propping up companies that facilitate cooperation with People’s Liberation Army-affiliated universities is bad policy,” Sobolik added. “Washington should be cutting funding for academic cooperation with China, not bankrolling it.”
Tsinghua University has been designated by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which focuses on defense policy, as “very high risk.” The Chinese institution houses major defense laboratories and, in 2016, launched a “training base” for nuclear weapons with the state-run Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, which engages in nuclear weapons testing and was placed on a U.S.
Commerce Department
export blacklist in 1997,
according
to
multiple
reports and government
documents
.
One congressman told the Washington Examiner that the
Freedom Caucus
, a group of conservative House Republicans he is part of, should be investigating federal money going to entities such as Tsinghua Gix Institute.
“We shouldn’t have given them anything,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) said. “It doesn’t surprise me, though. There’s so much wasteful spending in Congress. It’s been that way for years. We are spending money we don’t have and on programs that we don’t support. There’s no benefit to the American taxpayer with some of these programs we’re funding.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Tsinghua Gix Institute, the University of Washington, and the Small Business Administration did not reply to requests for comment.
