U.S. Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) has been an advocate of ensuring that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not wielding its influence through American universities.
“Since taking control in 2012, President Xi Jinping has escalated the CCP’s efforts to control every aspect of Chinese life at home and aggressively expand influence overseas,” he said in a statement. “Utah’s higher education system must remain a place of critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and diversity of thought. Oppressive communist ideology has no home here. I support the FBI’s ‘whole-of-society’ approach to increase awareness and vigilance that continues to foster the benefits of international collaboration without compromising national security.”
Efforts funded by the Chinese Communist Party undermine national security, a recent report from the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) said. The claim is that the country uses student organizations—like the Confucius Institutes—to seize upon “woke” trends while claiming racism and intolerance to discredit anti-Chinese Communist Party speakers on campuses.
Moreover, China has sought educational initiatives and has funded programs and faculty on campuses across the country while also placing students in graduate-level programs to conduct its alleged theft of intellectual property, AFPI said. It also claims that the Chinese try to develop a cadre of “collectors” of intelligence and intellectual property.
Joe Augustyn, a former CIA officer with experience relating to Chinese espionage in the U.S., told CNN that Chinese graduate students are briefed when they leave China and when they return from the U.S.; an October AFPI report said.
Furthermore, the report noted that the National Association of Scholars has a list of graduate students, researchers, and visiting scholars and professors who have faced allegations of espionage and selling secrets to China. It also stated that Chinese efforts to secure technology and intelligence from American institutes of higher education is planned and deliberate and that China has conducted talent recruitment programs since the late 1990s.
A 2019 letter from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of the General Counsel noted that colleges and universities are required to disclose the receipt of any foreign money or contracts with foreign governments, businesses or individuals. Over the last several years, the Department of Education has conducted compliance investigations into six universities. Those investigations found that the six universities collectively failed to report more than $1.3 billion from foreign sources (including China, Qatar and Russia) over the past seven years despite their clear legal duty to do so. Furthermore, the investigations uncovered that five of the six universities either have or had multiple contracts with the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, a company that has been the subject of multiple U.S. national security and trust concerns and has been banned from accessing federal broadband subsidies for posing a national security risk.
Moore was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020 to represent Utah’s 1st Congressional District, his House website said. He serves on the House Committee on Armed Services and the House Committee on Natural Resources.
