Even as the United States banishes various Chinese companies from its bourses and ponders more restrictions, a close scrutiny of public records by a media outlet indicated that Chinese companies who had been involved in extensive cyber-attacks and espionage had funnelled millions of dollars into US universities.
Australian institutions seem to have been similarly exposed to Chinese largesse which targets students and faculty alike. While there is close analysis of financing of China’s covert operations, there has so far been little data available on Beijing’s ‘influence operations’ on this most volatile segment of society.
The whole operation has come to public notice with the media house accessing federal records of donations made to US universities, which revealed that prestigious institutions such as Duke University was operating a joint campus with Wuhan University, which has repeatedly carried out cyber-attacks on behalf of the Chinese military.
The North Western University received millions in research funding from a Chinese defence contractor directly linked to stealing designs of the F-35 fighters. Earlier, a Department of Audit investigation found that US universities had failed to disclose some $6.5 billion in donations from China and other countries. While some of this could be targeted at accessing research for the Chinese PLA, others are assessed as being ‘public outreach’ projects, or quite simply intelligence operations.
None of this should come as a surprise.
In 2018, a major US think-tank received money from Huawei and then produced a report praising its technology. The vice president of the institute later defended Huawei, when it was identified as a national security threat.
More recently, Wuhan University was again in the limelight as the Department of Justice charged a Harvard University professor for taking some $50,000 a month and living expenses of $158,000 as part of Beijing’s ‘Thousand Talents’ programme, without authorisation.
In another instance, a serving PLA lieutenant was found to be studying at the Boston University’s Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering, even while she was following directions from her superior in the PLA. Another ‘student’ tried to smuggle biological research vials out of the US.
The sheer numbers of Chinese students rose from a few hundred to 370,000 in 2019, bringing in some $15 billion into the US economy. Numbers have since fallen by 61 percent, not just due to the pandemic, but also a ban on students with ties to the Chinese government. The US universities are going to suffer, and badly.
In Australia, a bizarre incident highlighted the extent of Chinese ingress. A small protest against Chinese suppression of Uighurs at the University of Queensland was set upon by violent mobs of Chinese students. The Chinese consul chose to praise the ‘patriotic’ behaviour by the mob. Ironically, he was an adjunct professor at the university.
Earlier, the university had 'co-founded' at least four courses with the Confucius Institute, run worldwide by the official language training department Hanban. At the time, the Vice Chancellor had been a member of the governing council of the Global Confucius Institute Headquarters, which controls hundreds of such institutions across the globe.
There are more soft power centres, including the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations that keep a close eye on Chinese students, sometimes forcing them to report back to them. Chinese students were the largest group in Australia in 2019 at 212,264 , providing some top schools with at least a fifth of their total income.
India with its lack of accessible public records, poor data gathering and a sprawling education sector is particularly vulnerable. Available data indicates some 48,000 students from 164 countries, but with no mention of China. But some sense of threat seems to have existed.
Days before a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019, the University Grants Commission barred collaborations with China without ministry approval. Post-Galwan, the education ministry is reviewing Chinese language courses across universities, including two ‘Confucius Institutes’ in India, one in Mumbai University, and the other rather surprisingly in the Vellore Institute of Technology, in Tamil Nadu.
While this is welcome, closer scrutiny is needed for 369 private universities, and another 46 deemed universities, not to mention the several hundreds of private institutions which are more than willing to accept money from anywhere. This is dangerous territory, all the more so because it targets the most vulnerable and easily misled section of the population, which constitutes nearly half the population.
That’s a lot of minds to tinker with.
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