CCP Influence in U.S. Higher Education Targeted as House Passes New Restrictions

Several U.S. schools accept hosted the Confucius Institute, a CCP-sponsored accent and ability program.

The House of Representatives on May 7 anesthetized a bill that would ban the Department of Homeland Security from accouterment grants to colleges and universities that accomplice with the entities of China’s cardinal Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

By a vote of 266–153, the alcove anesthetized HR 881, “DHS Restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese Entities of Concern.” Every Republican present voted for the bipartisan legislation, forth with 55 Democrats.

Confucius Institutes are Beijing-backed Chinese accent centers that run in universities in the United States and added countries. Critics acquaint that the programs serve as a agent to advance the CCP’s advertising and censorship on American academy campuses.
U.S. schools that host Confucius Institutes are already banned from accepting Department of Defense funding.

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“The [CCP] exploited the accessible and collaborative attributes of American academia to conduct boundless automated aggressive espionage central the United States,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said during the House Rules Committee’s altercation of the bill on May 5.

The bill additionally prohibits colleges and universities from application with China’s Thousand Talents program, or any article affiliated to that nation’s military, police, or intelligence agencies, or its Ministry of Industry and Advice Technology.

“The convention of college apprenticeship may achieve accommodation for these funds aloft abortion of the relationship,” the resolution reads.

Top U.S. Universities Cut Ties With CCP-Linked Programs Amid National Security Concerns

The University of Michigan, the University of California-Berkeley, and the Georgia Convention of Technology afresh burst their ties and hosting of CCP-linked entities.

This angle has been debated for years. The House anesthetized a adaptation of it aftermost year, but Democrats and then-President Joe Biden said that the admeasurement was ever ample and should not disqualify any schools from accepting federal adversity aid, which Homeland Security administers.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who co-wrote the bill, said the new adaptation of the bill includes accouterment abstruse abetment to advice schools accede with the regulations, and a abandonment area college apprenticeship institutions could participate with Chinese entities in bound affairs if cooperation “is of civic interest.”

The vote comes 10 canicule afterwards the Department of Apprenticeship appear that the University of California–Berkeley, is beneath analysis for allegedly not advertisement hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from a China-linked article dating aback to 2023 and allegedly administration advice about an “important technology.”

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Foxx said that while alone a scattering of universities are currently partnering with the CCP’s Confucius Institutes, 43 out of 74 schools that were complex with the affairs in the accomplished are still advancement relationships with the Chinese aeon they met.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) said attention U.S. college apprenticeship from adopted access “is a abundantly acclimatized issue,” and that Republicans are crumbling time on this legislation instead of ambidextrous with added acute issues.

“But if my colleagues appetite to exhausted a asleep horse to get in some talking credibility because there’s no legislation of aftereffect on the attic this week, adore yourselves.”

Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) said added Congressional accomplishments like this bill are bare to assure the United States from espionage and stop China from burglary U.S. barter secrets and bookish property.

“The Chinese Communist Party does not allotment our interests or our values,” he said during a May 6 altercation on the measure.

“The Chinese Communist Party is no best an bread-and-butter adversary. They are an enemy.”

Last month, President Donald Trump, in an controlling order, emphasized absolute federal regulations that crave colleges and universities to address adopted donations of $250,000 or added alert a year. Department of Apprenticeship Secretary Linda McMahon accused Biden of “turning a dark eye to universities’ acknowledged obligations.”

The Department of Apprenticeship additionally appear that, dating aback to 2014, U.S. universities had accustomed added than $19.6 billion in adopted donations or contracts, including $3.1 billion from Qatar, $1.5 billion from China, and $1.1 billion from Saudi Arabia.