A nonprofit aimed at transparency has released a report stating that major public universities have not properly disclosed millions, and potentially, billions of dollars in donations from China.
At the same time, U.S. institutions have spent millions on promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology.
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On Wednesday, Open The Books shared data about how unreported donations to American universities is aiding China’s access to U.S. defense technology and research.
”[T]ens of millions of dollars in contracts from China have demonstrably been used to establish joint university programs that then went unreported to our federal government,” the report states.
”Over the past decade, American institutions began pouring money into counterproductive, divisive DEI infrastructure,” it continues. “Meanwhile, China was spending to gain influence in American academia, accessing research and technology to advance their national interests.”
While Ohio State University has used over $15 million from Chinese donations since 2013 for projects like its China Gateway program, the school spends nearly the same amount each year on DEI staffers, according to Open The Books. Top DEI officials at Ohio State earn nearly $300,000 in salary, with 29 individuals reportedly earning in the range of $100,000 to $269,000 annually.
The watchdog reports that the $13.1 million spent on DEI employees at Ohio State in 2023 was enough to cover the full tuition of more than 1,000 in-state students. The university has also given donations to DEI-based organizations, such as “Salvation and Social Justice” and the National Diversity Council.
In March 2024, Open The Books reported that the top DEI official at the University of Virginia earned roughly $587,000 in salary and benefits. The cost to pay the base salaries of DEI administrators is equivalent to tuition payments from nearly 1,000 undergraduates, according to the watchdog.
While large public universities have continued to employ extensive DEI bureaucracies, many such institutions have also used funding from Chinese donations to form partnerships with Chinese universities. U.S. officials have increasingly warned that such joint programs represent national security threats due to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to steal American research.
Open The Books points to the University of California, Berkeley, which has received a whopping $87.5 million from China since 2013 – the most of any institution. The watchdog reports that the school also received nearly $60 million from both Hong Kong and Taiwan.
UC Berkeley reportedly used its two largest Chinese contracts to establish the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI), which the U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP has accused of “transferring critical U.S. technologies and expertise to China, including to entities linked to China’s defense machine and the security apparatus it uses to facilitate human rights abuses.”
Similarly, the report also acknowledges the $32.3 million in funding that Georgia Tech has received from China since 2013, most of which was used to create the Georgia Tech-Shenzhen Institute (GTSI). Open The Books notes that Georgia Tech announced it was ending the partnership just before the House Select Committee’s investigative report on the CCP’s influence over American colleges.
”The actual amount of Chinese funding flowing into UC Berkeley is potentially much higher than $87.5 million, and at Georgia Tech it’s perhaps much higher than $32.3 million,” Open The Book’s report states. “The Committee ‘uncovered significant failures in the reporting of foreign funding by UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech under section 117 of the Higher Education Act’ and projected there are ‘likely hundreds of millions, if not billions in total’ of unreported Chinese gifts sent to American universities.”
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Open The Books says that American universities have not reported all their funding from China because such Chinese partnerships are “often established as their own legal entities – separate from their American university partners.”
”With hundreds of millions or billions behind China’s efforts to penetrate American academia, it’s critical that universities take a closer look at their own reporting and ensure every foreign dollar makes its way into their government reporting,” report concludes. “Similarly, Congress should take action on the House Select Committee’s findings, clarifying the law as needed in order to capture every dime of foreign influence.”
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
