“In 2024,” says a new report from Americans for Public Trust, “China poured over $175 billion into U.S. schools, and the historic breadth of this vast enterprise cannot be understated.” Americans for Public Trust’s report also reveals that,
Additional government investigations have also revealed a dramatic increase in instances of U.S-based researchers being arrested for illegally collaborating with China, providing more alarming evidence of the level of influence gifts and contracts have bought Beijing with some of our premiere universities and research institutions. Since 2018, the Department of Justice has filed at least twenty criminal cases involving Chinese economic and intellectual espionage.
China has been exerting influence on America via our universities and our K-12 schools for a generation. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has been detailing the way China uses soft power to influence American policy via reports such as Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education (2017); Corrupting the College Board: Confucius Institutes and K-12 Education (2020); After Confucius Institutes: China’s Enduring Influence on American Higher Education (2022); and China and Our Children (2024). We have also assembled public data sources on the means and effects of Chinese—and other foreign nationals’—influence on American higher education, including our Foreign Donor Database, Confucius Institutes catalogue, and Illegal Ties to China catalogue.
Our federal government should have the primary responsibility for preventing China from exerting undue influence on America’s universities and K-12 schools. Yet Congress has been slow to pass appropriate legislation, and our federal security bureaucracies have also been slow to act. Some aspects of education reform, moreover, may pertain more to the states than to the federal government. The states can take the initiative to remove Chinese influence from their public universities—and should. Our federal and state governments can work in complement to preserve American security.
[RELATED: China Thanks You for Your Academic Service]
Our model China Gifts Act is drawn almost entirely from Ohio’s SB 1 (2025), which we believe is the only state law to ban a public university from accepting gifts from the People’s Republic of China. This statute is simple, effective, and excellent; we call it our model Act, but all credit is due to Ohio’s legislators.
China is not the only foreign nation exerting undue influence on America’s universities. We have detailed other forms of undue influence in Outsourced to Qatar: A Case Study of Northwestern University-Qatar (2022); Hijacked: The Capture of America’s Middle East Studies Centers (2022); The Company They Keep: Organizational and Economic Dynamics of the BDS Movement (2023); Shadows of Influence: Uncovering Hidden Foreign Funds to American Universities (2024); and Instagram the Intifada: Mapping the Social Network of Students for Justice in Palestine (2024).
State legislators might well consider whether to enact other laws to increase transparency about all foreign gifts, modeled, for example, on the proposed federal DETERRENT Act. They might also consider whether to prohibit gifts from other countries inimical to American liberty, such as Iran and Qatar. We do not want, however, to muddle the argument for state legislation to reduce Chinese influence on American public universities. For the moment, our model Act concerns itself exclusively with prohibiting gifts from the People’s Republic of China and its agents.
Governments around the world are acting to restrict China’s influence on their educational institutions, including Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Our federal government is also taking the initiative to ensure that China does not suborn our colleges and universities. Our state governments can and should pass laws to achieve the same goal.
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Image: “Potential-USA-sectors-China” by Territory of American Canada on Wikimedia Commons
A very dishonest report of “$175 billion into U.S. schools.” As if annual, but it’s “over decades.” It”s gifts and contracts. Sounds lot like a business. The “schools” listed are universities, apparently.
The U.S. can try to isolate its academia from the flourishing world, even as Trump does his best to damage what we have here. But I don’t think it will go well.
I do hope China does give us time on its planned accelerator, for American particle physicists lagging big American facilities.
Something about your comment tells me that you don’t quite understand what’s going on here.