The Very Long View
by Mustang
“Their [China’s] goal is to exploit America’s academic freedom to instill in the minds of future leaders a pro-China viewpoint.” —Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) February 2018.
The senator’s comment found its way into an opinion piece by Josh Rogin, writing for the Washington Post. More than four years ago, Rogin wanted readers to know that China was heavily involved in a “massive” foreign influence campaign in the United States — and has been for a very long time, as part of a program to sow the seeds of pro-Chinese communism in American institutions.
Which is why, he tells us, China is investing so heavily in American institutions of higher learning (and private academies). In 2018, U.S. officials, lawmakers, and academics began to focus on Beijing’s presence on American campuses — specifically, by “compelling public and private institutions to reconsider hosting Confucius Institutes, the Chinese government-sponsored outposts of culture and language training.
The Cypher Brief adds —
China has long engaged in a spying campaign against the United States—from cyber espionage and stealing intellectual property to subtle attempts to infiltrate research laboratories at American universities.
According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Beijing is quietly at work gaining access to the trade secrets of U.S. and multinational corporations though ‘academic espionage,’ relying on scholars and researchers as spies.
The FBI and the Department of Justice have called on U.S. colleges and universities to tighten their requirements for their employees to report their financial ties with China.
As the private sector becomes more difficult for Chinese intelligence to operate in with impunity, college campuses have become more attractive as an avenue for obtaining critical U.S. data.
Two years later, Fox News reported, “Top Republicans from a slew of House committees demanded information Monday about what they said is the Chinese Communist Party’s ‘investment in American colleges and universities to further its strategic and propaganda goals’ — an initiative they claimed could be foreign academic espionage.”
Two years after that (2022), The New Yorker asked, “Have Chinese Spies infiltrated American Campuses?”
So far, then, this “concern” has taken the VERY long view. Because, in 1996, the Buffalo News headlined “Probe widens into role of foreign funds in ’96 election.” The story continued, “[Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN)] committee and the Senate Government Affairs Committee, headed by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), are investigating possible foreign influence in the U.S. election process, including whether Chinese government officials channeled money into the Democratic Party before last November’s presidential election.”
Senator Thompson (now deceased) issued his final report in six volumes on 10 March 1998. You can read it here.
So, the question is, after so many years of wrangling about foreign espionage, foreign infiltration of American university campuses, office staffs of members of Congress, clandestine meetings of Chinese agents with members of Congress, and Chinese military go-betweens delivering suitcases of cash to political parties — at what point does the long view become too long?
Mustang also blogs at Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar
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