83 Colleges and 26 Schools Act as a Pipeline for China’s Regime: Report

A new report from Defending Education has identified at least 83 universities and 26 K-12 schools across 30 states that exposed their students to Chinese Communist Party propaganda through the Young Envoys Scholarship program.

According to the report, titled “Little Red Classrooms: China’s Infiltration of American K-12 Schools,” the program is monitored by the China Education Association for International Exchange, or CEAIE, and serves as an alternative to the Confucius Institutes, which Congress began restricting in 2021.

On its Chinese website, the organization states that it is guided by “Marxism-Leninism” and Xi Jinping thought on socialism. It aims to “always adhere to the leadership of the Party and integrate the Party’s work into the entire process of the association’s operation and development.”

Reagan Dugan, director of higher education initiatives at Defending Education, told the Daily Signal that it is an attempt by the Chinese communist regime to create a pipeline into America’s classrooms.

“The organization Xi Jinping personally tasked with bringing 50,000 young Americans to China, CEAIE, states in its own charter that it exists to carry out Party activities and ‘adhere to the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China,’” Dugan said.

“This same organization is now overseeing YES programming inside at least 83 universities and 26 K-12 schools in 30 states. Families are being sold cultural exchange,” Dugan continued. “What they’re actually getting is a Party-run pipeline into their kids’ classrooms.”

China Education Association for International Exchange did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.

As previously reported by The College Fix, a GOP spokesperson confirmed to the outlet that a number of universities were under investigation for failing to disclose all foreign funding.

Data compiled by The College Fix also found that state-sponsored institutions, such as the University of Illinois System, raked in $26.5 million of the $168 million in gifts from Chinese sources to American universities during a six-month period in 2021.

A different report from The College Fix noted that at Indiana University, a Chinese researcher was detained and deported after he pleaded guilty to smuggling DNA derived from E. coli into the United States.

The Fix also noted that, in 2020, the Indiana attorney general launched an investigation into state colleges over Chinese influence.

All three colleges were listed in Defending Education’s report.

The issue, as noted in the report, is not limited to higher education. Schools such as Lincoln High School in Washington state’s Tacoma Public Schools district are exposing schoolchildren to China’s government through program-sponsored trips.

These travel and exchange programs offered by the organization are used by Chinese government officials to have U.S. students serve a political function by facilitating “sponsored, carefully narrated visits attached to institutions and trumpeted in official state media accounts, often in ways that serve Chinese cultural diplomacy interests.”

Tacoma Public Schools did not return a request for comment by the time of publication.