House Passes Bill Aiming to Reduce Chinese Influence on American Campuses

Cyclists ride by Hoover Tower on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, Calif., on March 12, 2019. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The House passed a bill Wednesday to reduce Chinese influence by tightening the requirements for American universities to report foreign funding. The bill lowers the threshold from the current requirement of $250,000 in a calendar year to $0 for gifts or contracts from foreign countries of concern and $50,000 from other foreign sources.

If enacted, universities will have to apply for a one-year waiver to accept money from foreign countries of concern—currently defined as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—and must renew the waiver yearly.

The bill also requires universities to demonstrate that acceptance of funding from China and other countries of concern is “for the benefit of the institution’s mission and students and will promote the security, stability, and economic vitality of the United States” when applying for a waiver. Non-compliance may result in paying fines and removal of federal grants.

The passage of the bill came at a time when Congress and the American public became increasingly wary of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence operations on college campuses. Such manipulations include inserting communist ideologies in Chinese-language teaching programs, censoring campus activities involving participants critical of CCP policies, and stealing technology from academic research.

Meanwhile, according to a Gallup poll in June, Americans’ confidence in higher education has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points from 2015. Republicans drove the drop with a decrease of 37 percentage points over the last eight years. The decline in the Independents’ confidence level was 16, close to the overall level.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), an original co-sponsor of the bill and chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, praised the bill as a “great first step” in improving transparency and accountability in universities to restore American public trust in the higher education system.

Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), the initiator of the bill, said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times, “As our college campuses are subjected to the rampant spread of antisemitism and the continued presence of CCP influence campaigns, it is critical that we expose the forces attempting to influence our children.

“When foreign governments give money to our universities, they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts; they want something in return. Whether it’s terror-friendly states like Qatar and Iran, or brutal human rights abusers like the CCP, our campuses must not become puppets of countries who hate America.”

The bill, dubbed the “DETERRENT Act,” passed with 246 supportive votes, including some from Democrats.

Over the past decade, U.S. universities have increasingly depended on Chinese funding sources for tuition and grants. According to 2020 statistics by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chinese students pay about $12 billion in tuition annually. Since 2013, donations and contracts with Chinese sources have amounted to $1 billion.

Universities’ non-compliance with the reporting requirement of the current Higher Education Act partly led to the introduction of the “DETERRENT Act.” A Department of Education investigation in 2020 discovered unreported college funding of over $6.5 billion from China, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign countries.

Two months ago, Stanford University reached a settlement with the Department of Justice to pay $1.9 million for failing to disclose foreign funding 12 faculty members received on their research programs with federal grants.

The DOJ named one foreign employer: Fudan University, a prominent school in Shanghai, China. Stanford admitted no liability and promised to work with the National Science Foundation on “best practices in the areas of gifts funding research projects” and “current and pending support disclosures,” according to the DOJ release.

The House bill also requires faculty members in research-heavy colleges to disclose foreign gifts and private universities with endowments over $6 billion to reveal foreign investments and holdings with countries of concern.