It’s the consensus view that China seeks to displace the United States as the world’s preeminent power, with the American Right, center-Right, and center-Left in agreement on this issue. Much of American higher education understands this, even as institutions enter into generous contracts with — and accept substantial gifts from — a China that seeks undue influence in the service of a global strategy harmful to the United States. Universities also know that engaging the Chinese government and its proxies poses a risk to academic freedom, provides opportunities for shameless propaganda, and threatens technological espionage.
Yet schools take the money. For years, institutions of higher education have eagerly accepted generous gifts from and contracts with China — often intermediaries of the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”). Some universities have even contracted directly with the CCP’s Central Committee, such as one prestigious nonprofit that entered into a multimillion dollar contract with the CCP’s Central Committee in 2006. From 2015 to 2019, major American research institutions of higher education received more than $1 billion in funds from sources located in the PRC, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California the top recipients.
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