The Hudson Institute launched a new China Center this week specifically “dedicated to crafting policy responses to keep America’s strategic focus on China and [to] foster a national and global dialogue rooted in the values of freedom and democracy.” With many in the international community focused on the war in Ukraine, not much attention is centered on Chinese influence operations in the United States. It is not a new phenomenon but, it is important to recognize that as Chinese propaganda is aiding the Russian war effort, Beijing remains active on US soil.
What do Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania have in common? They are among the elite American universities that receive large monetary donations from China. While claiming they are not soliciting the tens of millions they receive, nor doing anything wrong, the universities continue to decline to disclose the source of their funding. Records, however, reveal that from 2014-2019 Harvard received $75 million, Yale $43.5 million, and UPenn $54.6 million from China. The Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania, beginning in 2016, received over $23 million in “confidential gifts” from China. During this period, the then former Vice President was listed as a professor and was set to lead the Center. When Biden decided to run for president, a fact known to the Chinese government, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken took over at head of the Center, prior to being named to Biden’s cabinet. In one month alone, in May 2018, China donated $14.5 million to the Biden Center. This largesse is not lost on President Xi Jinping.
These are only a few examples of China’s vast and sophisticated overseas influence operations over the last few years. Tom Anderson, director of the watch dog group National League and Policy Center’s (NLPC) Government Integrity Project, said: “We’ve asked … [United States Attorney] Weiss to pursue the larger network of individuals and institutions who benefited from millions doled out by foreign interests connected to Hunter Biden’s work in China and Ukraine.” US Department of Education officials admit that combined, China and Russia, may have doled out well over $6 billion to US schools in the last five years.
Reed Rubinstein, general counsel at the Department investigating the donations, pointed out that “Some IHE [institute of higher learning] leaders are starting to acknowledge the threat of foreign academic espionage and have been working with federal law enforcement to address gaps in reporting and transparency…However, the evidence suggests massive investments of foreign money have bred dependency and distorted the decision making, mission, and values of too many institutions.” As far back as February 2020 the Wall Street Journal reported that “Harvard and Yale were under investigation as part of a review that found US universities failed to report at least $6.5 billion in foreign funding from countries such as China….” Yale did not report a single foreign sourced donation. Harvard officials told an FBI agent meeting over the issue that it did not see a problem and did not want to cooperate with the FBI in determining if research professors at the school were influenced by communist China funding.
In January 2021, just prior to President Biden’s swearing in, the Free Beacon reported that “The American Council on Education (ACE), a lobbying group led by former Obama-administration official Ted Mitchell, is asking President-elect Joe Biden to ‘halt expanded reporting requirements” for contracts and foreign donations to universities. ACE represents nearly all of the major universities in the country, including top Democratic donors such as Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California system.’” The Center for Responsive Politics says that Chinese foreign agent spending has “skyrocketed from just over $10 million in 2016 to nearly $64 million” in 2020, making it the top spender on foreign influence operations inside the United States.
It took the US Justice Department three years to force the Xinhua (New Chinese News Agency) to file its first Foreign Lobby Report. The media organ is a propaganda mouthpiece run by senior Chinese Communist Party officials. From March 2020 to May 2021, its initial filing disclosed direct spending of $8.6 million in Washington, Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, and Chicago areas.
A 654-page report issued by the French Institute for Strategic Military Studies last October noted: “Beijing is also increasingly comfortable with infiltration and coercion: its influence operations have become considerably tougher in recent years and its methods are resembling more closely the ones employed by Moscow. This is a “Machiavellian turn” inasmuch as the Party-State now seems to believe that “it is much safer to be feared than to be loved,” in the words of Machiavelli in The Prince. This is a clear Russification of Chinese influence operations.” It certainly is a development Washington needs to pay attention to despite Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.