Recent developments in Washington indicate a growing awareness that the academic arena in the United States has become a strategic battlefield in competition with China. Last year, federal legislators passed the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act, advancing the SAFE Research Act, which links federal research funding to transparency in foreign relations.
While this legislation has yet to become law, it reflects a growing recognition that universities, laboratories, and federally funded research projects have become targets for exploitation by foreign entities. This awareness should have emerged much earlier.
However, policymakers have mainly focused on research universities and academic cooperation, neglecting the increasingly fierce competition in education that starts long before students enter universities. Some international high schools have quietly become pipelines for American higher education, operating outside regulations, free from scrutiny, export controls, or disclosure requirements. Why do these early education channels receive little attention?
Undoubtedly, these concerns are not unfounded. Indeed, more and more international schools operating in China have established formal or informal connections with American universities.
For example, the Western International School of Shanghai (WISS) in mainland China offers the first International Baccalaureate (IB) Career-related Programme in partnership with the IB organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. This program provides a vocational pathway for students aged 16 to 19, focusing on career-oriented learning while also offering the three main IB diploma options.
Since 2021, WISS has been promoting a dual-degree aviation program in collaboration with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in Florida. ERAU is a renowned American institution known for training pilots and aerospace engineers. The program aims to expose high school students to aviation, engineering, and aviation business fields during their schooling. These technical areas often have dual military and civilian applications that are crucial for civil transport and national defense logistics, occupying a unique strategic position in China’s national development and military planning.
Meanwhile, investigative publications indicate that Beijing faces a shortage of trained pilots and has been systemically relying on overseas (especially American) training channels to meet the demands of civil and military aviation. This underscores the strategic significance of early exposure to technical education aligned with the United States.
Another notable example is the Dulwich International High School network based in Singapore, demonstrating how this model extends beyond individual schools to operate on a large scale in the elite international education field in China. Dulwich International integrates British education deeply and directly incorporates American university-level courses into its secondary education. At its Suzhou campus, Dulwich currently offers American university credit courses in partnership with Marquette University in Wisconsin and the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, including the Pittsburg National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP) certified “College in High School” program.
It is worth mentioning that this is the first international high school collaboration project for the University of Pittsburgh, running concurrently with Dulwich’s existing dual-credit program with Marquette University. This arrangement allows students to obtain official transcripts from two American universities several years before applying to universities. Dulwich actively promotes these credits, emphasizing their transferability to numerous American universities and promoting them as part of guaranteed or priority admission pathways, sometimes exempting English language exams. According to the school, dozens of American universities recognize these credits, including Georgetown University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Suzhou North America High School goes a step further in directly aligning the school’s management and curriculum with American public universities. Established in 2013 and officially involved with North Carolina State University, it is the first international high school in Jiangsu province founded in collaboration with an American institution. Recognized by the provincial government, the school aims to prepare students for higher education in the United States, extending part of the American education system overseas by closely integrating secondary education’s management, curriculum, and outcomes with the expectations of American public universities.
Although there is no public evidence demonstrating that schools like WISS, Dulwich, or Suzhou North America High School are controlled by the Chinese government or intentionally design curricula around pro-CCP ideologies, they cannot operate independently of Chinese state oversight. According to the Regulations on Chinese-Foreign Cooperative Education enacted by the State Council in 2003 and implemented by the Ministry of Education, schools funded by foreign entities must conduct educational activities in cooperation with Chinese partners and adhere to supervision, curriculum approval, and other requirements.
A recent report on British private schools entitled “The Chinese takeover of Britain’s public schools” provides a relevant comparative perspective. In the UK, reliance on Chinese students and funding has reshaped the nature and focus of elite British schools like Harrow School, Roedean School, Cheltenham Ladies’ College, and Shrewsbury School through demographic shifts and market repositioning. British schools wishing to establish branches in China face stricter limitations, including restrictions on curriculum design and textbook use; some schools have even abandoned expansion plans to avoid violating regulations.
Understanding how the Chinese education system operates while ignoring its scrutiny of high school cooperation projects is a mistake.
While these collaborative projects may not involve federal funding, classified laboratories, or formal research agreements, they do involve fields like aviation, engineering, design, and creative industries that are crucial for national competitiveness. The American higher education and national security policies consider these collaborations as strategically neutral, overlooking the reality that technical capabilities and career development trajectories are established before university education or research regulation begins, creating vulnerability that existing safeguards cannot address.
The federal legislation under the SAFE Research Act reflects Congress’s recognition that foreign powers are attempting to erode American research institutions through opaque associations and cooperation relationships. However, current policy planning largely focuses on federally funded research, laboratories, and universities, only guarding the front door of the American academic arena.
Neglecting scrutiny of high school cooperation projects is a mistake. At the very least, any high school-level collaboration projects embedding American educational institutions overseas, especially in areas crucial for China’s capabilities (such as aviation and other related technical fields), should no longer be exempt from scrutiny to prevent backdoors from becoming front doors, lest regret sets in too late.