CCP donates $3B to US universities, but experts claim it’s just the beginning.

The Chinese Communist Party’s Influence on US Universities

Over the past 30 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has donated more than $3 billion to US universities. However, experts believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The US Department of Education has not consistently enforced the law that requires schools to report foreign contributions exceeding $250,000.

These contributions provide the CCP and other foreign entities with access to American campuses, where they conduct influence campaigns and engage in intellectual property theft, according to some experts and lawmakers.

“These dollars come with strings attached, which are then used to leverage American faculty and students,” said Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), chair of the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development.

“For example, foreign funds are used to set up state-backed cultural exchange centers that operate as cultural indoctrination centers. China, for instance, donates money to American universities to fund Confucius Institutes, renowned campus hubs known for pushing propaganda, like denial of the Tiananmen Square Massacre,” Mr. Owens said.

Those organizations also monitor and threaten Chinese international students in the United States if they criticize the CCP, Mr. Owens said.

However, some caution against addressing the situation in a way that could lead to a backlash against Asian Americans or hinder scholarly collaboration with international counterparts.

“We must ensure that colleges and universities are transparent about their ties to foreign entities,” said Ranking Member Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.).

“I fear that my Republican colleagues have overemphasized enforcement, rather than providing guidance regarding how to comply with the law,” Ms. Wilson added. “Asking for accountability and compliance in this hearing can occur without scapegoating our Asian American community.”

Mandatory Reporting

Under federal law, US colleges and universities must report donations or contracts worth more than $250,000 from foreign entities to the Department of Education twice a year.

“Unfortunately, the department’s enforcement efforts have historically been very uneven,” said Paul Moore, senior counsel at the Defense of Freedom Institute.

Mr. Moore highlighted a 2004 rule change that allows institutions to withhold the names of foreign donors, resulting in a significant increase in foreign contributions from countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others.

An October 2020 report by the Department of Education revealed that heightened enforcement efforts had led to the disclosure of $6.5 billion in unreported foreign donations. However, only a small fraction of institutions voluntarily report foreign contributions as required by law.

According to Mr. Moore, the difficulty lies not in following the law, but in institutions choosing not to report the readily available data.

‘Whack-a-Mole’

Monitoring funds from known bad actors is challenging because they can disband one organization and funnel money through another.

Craig Singleton, China program deputy director and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, compared it to a game of whack-a-mole, where one problematic organization disappears and another takes its place.

“In dozens of documented cases, US universities that shuttered their Confucius Institutes chose to maintain, and in some cases expand, academic and sensitive research relationships with their Chinese sister universities,” testified Mr. Singleton.

Confucius Institutes (CIs) are government-sponsored organizations that promote a sanitized version of the CCP’s history and human rights abuses under the guise of teaching.