Collin Anderson of the Washington Free Beacon reports disturbing news involving a major public university in Big 10 country.
Last November, University of Minnesota vice provost Harvey Charles traveled to Guangdong, China, to tour Sun Yat-sen University, the Chinese Communist Party-controlled college known for its top business school. It marked the first time a University of Minnesota delegation had visited the school since COVID, though Charles made clear that any geopolitical tensions stemming from the pandemic did not weaken his relationship with his Chinese counterparts.
“We were received warmly,” he said, “and their desire to continue collaborating with us was as enthusiastic, if not more so, than prior to the pandemic.”
Minnesota seems equally happy with its Sun Yat-sen partnership, which it first established through a joint MBA program in 2001. Sun Yat-sen has sent Minnesota’s flagship Twin Cities campus more than $3.5 million since 2018, according to federal disclosures obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Minnesota, in turn, encourages its business students to study abroad at Sun Yat-sen’s “leading” management school—and hosts Chinese students from Sun Yat-sen for an international residency program.
The partnership between the two schools, however, didn’t just survive COVID. It also remained in place as the U.S. government targeted Sun Yat-sen for its involvement in the Chinese government’s development of nuclear weapons. That involvement landed the university’s National Supercomputer Center on a U.S. export control blacklist in 2015, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Five years later, in 2020, the U.S. government added Sun Yat-sen to its “Unverified List,” which consists of foreign entities that refuse to comply with American export inspectors.
Minnesota’s willingness to maintain ties with Sun Yat-sen in the face of U.S. government warnings reflects the CCP’s infiltration of American higher education. Chinese entities routinely funnel millions of dollars to U.S. universities—Stanford accepted more than $27 million from such entities in 2021 and early 2022—in an attempt to peddle influence.