According to official data from the United States, mainland China and Hong Kong have provided nearly $6 billion to American universities, making them the second-largest source of foreign funding. The U.S. House Committee on China Issues bluntly stated that the related funding has clear political intentions. Experts interviewed further pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using academic and cultural exchanges as a cover to systematically advance its united front work, posing a long-term threat to democratic nations.
The U.S. House Committee on China Issues released a statement on Monday, January 5th, stating that data shows funding from the CCP to American universities has exceeded $4 billion, making it the fourth largest foreign funding source. When combined with around $1.9 billion from Hong Kong, the total reaches nearly $6 billion, rising to become the second-largest foreign funding source.
The data is based on statistics from the U.S. Department of Education’s ForeignFundingHigherEd.gov website as of the end of February 2025.
The statement revealed that the top three recipients of funding from mainland China are New York University, Harvard University, and Stanford University; while the top three from Hong Kong are Harvard, Yale, and Stanford University.
Committee Chairman John Moolenaar stated that through this new platform, “we can clearly see that China has provided nearly $6 billion in funding to American universities with the aim of transferring crucial research results, influence, and academic talent to China.”
According to the Higher Education Act of the United States, the website concentrates on publicly disclosing foreign donations and research contract information reported lawfully by American universities to enhance transparency. The Department of Education emphasizes that universities are required to report donations or contracts exceeding $250,000 from the same foreign source within a year, and are responsible for the accuracy of the reported content.
In response to this, Professor Xie Tian from the School of Business at the University of South Carolina mentioned in an interview with Epoch Times that the CCP’s infiltration into the American academic sector is not a single event but a long-term and systematic project. He described the situation as “like a fox entering a chicken coop,” seemingly normal on the surface but posing significant risks in reality.
Xie Tian analyzed that through financial support, the CCP can display its influence in academic paper authorship, access cutting-edge research results, and grasp the direction of the latest technological developments.
He added that such collaborations often extend to inviting American scholars to lecture in China, exchange ideas, and even corrupt through money or other incentives. “The CCP will use various means, whether legal or illegal, public or unethical, to obtain research results from the United States.”
Xie Tian believes that Harvard, Stanford, New York, and Yale universities may be the initial main targets for the CCP, but its appetite is not limited to these institutions and will inevitably expand to more universities, including advanced technological research institutions like MIT, Caltech, and Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
He specifically mentioned the case of Charles Lieber, former chair of the Chemistry Department at Harvard University. Reportedly, Lieber joined the CCP’s “Thousand Talents Program” in 2011, becoming a “strategic scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology, while concealing relevant facts from the U.S. federal government, leading to his conviction in 2022.
Author of “Political Warfare: Strategies Against the CCP’s ‘Win Without Fighting’ Plan” Kerry Gershaneck pointed out that during his work for the CCP, Lieber was in an excellent position to “identify and assess which students and professors are susceptible to financial enticements for the CCP to recruit.”
Rong-wei Lai, CEO of the Taiwan Inspiration Association, stated to Epoch Times that the CCP’s infiltration into academia is not a singular event but a systematic united front action targeting “the whole world,” with Taiwan equally affected.
He emphasized that united front work is “basically political warfare,” under the CCP’s system of governance where all funds, culture, and academic exchanges ultimately serve the interests of the party-state.
Citing a report by the American private strategic intelligence agency Strider Technologies published in October 2025, the Associated Press reported that in recent years, over 500 American universities and research institutions had collaborated with researchers from the Chinese military, assisting Beijing in developing advanced technologies with potential military applications.
The report indicated that in 2024 alone, American institutions and research units affiliated with the Chinese military collectively published nearly 2,500 papers in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. Strider noted that such collaborations “not only facilitate potential illegal knowledge transfer but also support Beijing’s initiatives to recruit top international talent under national guidance,” actions often detrimental to U.S. national interests.
According to observations by Rong-wei Lai, the CCP places more emphasis on “long-term influence” than Russia, reflecting the CCP’s deeper strategic patience. The academic sector is the “most challenging” area for the CCP’s united front work in the West due to its operations mostly within legal frameworks.
For professors and scholars, the CCP often utilizes lectures, seminars, forums, authorship, and research cooperation; while for the younger generation, they target graduate students, undergraduates, and young scholars, inviting them to visit China for exchanges or publish articles, with the primary goal being to “establish relationships.”
Once relationships are established, connections move to an “offline” stage through private channels like WeChat and Weibo, gradually extending from academia to political perspectives and opinion observations. Money often gradually becomes involved through payments, subsidies, fixed funding, and even deliberate third-party transfers to reduce direct tracking risks.
Rong-wei Lai further explained that the CCP’s long-term layout does not seek immediate returns but waits for these individuals to enter corporations, public sectors, critical infrastructure, or political systems before leveraging existing relationship networks to exert influence. Such infiltration often manifests as creating doubts about the U.S., disparaging democratic systems, overly praising the Chinese model, and even systematically spreading narratives unfavorable to specific governments.
He particularly warned of the changing role of Hong Kong, stating that “today’s Hong Kong has become another weapon of the CCP.” Once a window for free finance and international exchange, Hong Kong is now being intentionally utilized by the CCP as an intermediary for funding and political influence under its control.
Faced with such united front infiltration conducted under legal cover, Lai emphasized that government prevention must be highly restrained. He believed that rather than resorting to criminal law, a dual approach of administrative regulations and social resilience should be taken.
He stated that criminal law requires clear evidence and intent, which can be difficult to determine. Full criminalization might lead to judicial burdens, societal panic, or even questioning of being “anti-democratic.”
He advocated that the core of administrative regulations lies in information transparency. “As long as you clearly state the source of funds and the purpose of exchanges, we should be transparent.” Through a risk classification system, management should be based on proportionality principles rather than blanket prohibitions.
Simultaneously, he expressed that societal overall discernment must also be enhanced to make citizens aware of the risks rather than being inadvertently included in influencing networks.
The overflow effect of this united front model has also appeared outside of campuses in recent years. On January 6, 2026, independent investigative journalist Nate Friedman revealed on the NewsMax news network that during a protest in New York City advocating against the arrest of Venezuelan President Maduro, paid protesters were identified.
The organization behind the protest, The People’s Forum, has one of its main backers as wealthy businessman Neville Singham, a long-term resident of Shanghai. Singham has collaborated extensively with the CCP government and official media, financing CCP external propaganda activities through non-profit organizations and shell companies.
According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, a series of organizations funded by Singham (collectively called the “Singham Network”) have been channeling undisclosed funds to the United States since at least 2017, propagating Communist Party-supported agendas and opinions.
Lai warned that when academic discourses, youth cognition, and social mobilization are interconnected, united front work is no longer just about ideological influence but becomes a combat tool with substantial political mobilization capabilities, posing a long-term challenge to democratic societies.