Stanford University introduced a new campus research hub that has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
In mid-February, the university opened the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. The center is run by the Freeman Spogli Institute, a foreign policy organization that is connected to the Chinese government. The Freeman Spogli Institute has a history of coopering with China, though it refuses to disclose whether it has taken money from the Chinese government.
According to a report by The Washington Free Beacon, the Freeman Spogli Institute has ties to Peking University in Beijing which is run by a former Chinese spy named Qiu Shuiping. A report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute designated Peking University as a “high risk” organization for its involvement in Chinese defense research and links to state-owned nuclear weapons programs.
Peking University has hosted joint projects with the University of Chicago as well.
The Center on China’s Economy and Institutions website claims that the center’s goals are to advance students’ understanding of China’s economic and political issues.
“The Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions is Stanford’s home for empirical, multidisciplinary research on China’s economy,” the website claims. “We aim to foster path-breaking research, create transformative student experiences, and advance public understanding of China’s economy and its impact on the world.”
In an introductory guidebook to the center, staff claim that research briefs from the new Chinese-affiliated center will be shared with policymakers in Washington, D.C., as well as technology investment organizations and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
The same guidebook announced that the center will host an event with Professor Jean Oi on March 9. Oi is a founding member of Stanford’s research center at Peking University.
Stanford’s Chinese-affiliated center may soon have increased influence in Washington D.C. as President Joe Biden has nominated one of the organization’s senior scholars for undersecretary of defense. According to a separate Washington Free Beacon report, Colin Kahl, a former Obama administration official, worked at the Freeman Spogli Institute.
Stanford is among many elite universities that host Chinese-affiliated programs on campus. The university also hosts a Confucius Institute, which functions as a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party on America’s college campuses. A review of federal records found that more than 100 U.S. universities have Confucius Institutes available to students.
Other universities partner with Chinese entities beyond Confucius Institutes as well. In 2015, Washington University-St. Louis joined an alliance with Xi’an Jiaotong University called the University Alliance of the Silk Road (UASR). The UASR has direct ties to the Chinese government.
The Daily Wire reported:
Washington University-St. Louis remains the only Northern American school to join the University Alliance of the Silk Road (UASR), which is an academic arm of the People’s Republic of China.
The organization claims to be “non-governmental,” though Chinese-sanctioned media admits that UASR is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s academic programming.
Universities often fail to disclose financial relationships to foreign adversaries such as China as well. Data from the Department of Education show that several top-tier universities, including Cornell and Yale, failed to report more than $3 billion in foreign gifts and funds, much of which came from hostile nations like China.