U.S. Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) claims the Biden administration is doing nothing to stop the threat the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses on college campuses and may even be allowing it to flourish.
“For too long, policymakers were blind to the insidious threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party on our campuses,” Franklin said in a statement. “Many now recognize the problem and are actively working to address it. Unfortunately, the Biden administration continues to ignore it and is actively working against solutions, most notably with its decision to shut down the Justice Department’s China Initiative. Once Republicans take the majority in the House, we will establish a committee to investigate the CCP threat and hold the Biden administration accountable.”
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 China 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 as the country attempts to develop a cadre of “collectors” of intelligence and intellectual property.
Former FBI Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi stated that China allegedly has a “shopping list” of technologies they hope to obtain, usually at university research labs; an October AFPI report said. The report also noted that approximately half of the students in U.S. graduate programs are from overseas, and 37% of students in STEM graduate programs are from China.
A 2019 letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the General Counsel pointed out that the Higher Education Act requires colleges and universities to disclose any money they receive from foreign entities. An investigation found that six universities neglected to report more than $1.3 billion from foreign nations (including China, Qatar and Russia) over the last seven years. The probe also discovered that five of the six universities had multiple contracts with Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications 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.
A March press release from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) announced that he and a number of senators had sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland stating their opposition to a decision by the Biden administration and Justice Department to end the China Initiative, a national security program set up in 2018 to curb espionage by the Chinese at colleges and universities across the nation. In its place, the administration set up the “Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats,” a vague plan that equates the unique threat the CCP represents with those of other hostile nation-states. The senators argued that the China Initiative marked a long-overdue step toward recognizing the unique and large-scale threat posed by the CCP.
Franklin was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives representing Florida’s 15th Congressional District in 2020, his House website said. He sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. He was an aviator in the U.S. Navy for 26 years, 14 of those years on active duty and an additional 12 as a reservist.
