The Department of Education has launched a new online portal, foreignfundinghighered.gov, which allows the public to view the amount of foreign money received by American universities. According to data from the portal, China is listed as the fourth largest foreign contributor, providing over $4 billion to U.S. institutions. When including an additional $1.9 billion from Hong Kong, China moves up to second place among foreign contributors.
Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar commented on the significance of this information: “Secretary McMahon and the Trump administration have done tremendous work to bring transparency to our universities. Through this portal we can all see that China has given nearly $6 billion to our nation’s universities in order to transfer critical research, influence, and academic talent to China,” said Moolenaar. “Passing the SAFE Research Act and the DETERRENT Act will protect students and the taxpayer-funded research being done on our nation’s campuses.”
The portal shows that New York University, Harvard University, and Stanford University are the top three recipients of funding from mainland China. For contributions coming from Hong Kong, Harvard University leads, followed by Yale University and Stanford University.
In the previous year, the Select Committee released several investigations addressing research security and China's activities on U.S. campuses. These reports include "Fox in the Henhouse," "Joint Institutes, Divided Loyalties," and "Ph.D. to PLA."
