Pressure Forces Pentagon to Restrict Funding of Schools With Chinese Ties

Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports on a recent policy change for the American military.

The Pentagon has placed restrictions on a policy that would have allowed American colleges to receive taxpayer funds while hosting Chinese spy outposts, a decision that follows a congressional pressure campaign and Washington Free Beacon report exposing the funding loophole.

The Defense Department, in an Aug. 15 letter, informed Congress that it has overhauled a waiver program that would have allowed American universities to rake in taxpayer cash while hosting Confucius Institutes, a Chinese Communist Party-backed program that Beijing uses to peddle influence and steal intellectual property from American universities.

Congress in 2021 barred the Pentagon from awarding research projects to any U.S. school that hosts a Confucius Institute, citing concerns the Communist regime would use these outposts to spy on sensitive military research. Chinese spies have infiltrated a number of American schools, with the Justice Department warning earlier in February that up to 60 top colleges are vulnerable to CCP espionage operations. But the Pentagon instituted a waiver program earlier this year to help schools skirt the federal ban, the Free Beacon reported.

Following a Republican pressure campaign, the Pentagon has decided to narrow the waiver program and close loopholes that would have allowed Confucius Institute employees to access information about Defense Department research projects. The Pentagon also disclosed that, after instituting these changes, not a single U.S. school applied for a waiver, though schools can apply at a later date.

“At present, the Department has not granted, nor does the Department expect to grant, any waivers” before the federal funding ban takes effect in October, the Pentagon informed Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), who has been spearheading an investigation into the waiver program.

The Defense Department will also “terminate any existing contracts and grants to any” U.S. institution that hosts a Confucius Institute after the October deadline, according to the letter.