[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 63 (Monday, April 17, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H1751-H1755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           CHINESE INVOLVEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bean) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. BEAN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BEAN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to stand before you 
and lead this Special Order tonight.
  I have a message. That message is our Nation's higher education 
system is being purchased and manipulated by the Chinese Communist 
Party.
  America needs a wake-up call. I thought that wake-up call would come 
in the form of a Chinese spy balloon. If it was the Chinese spy balloon 
sent to wake us up, it seems that America has hit the snooze button.
  A few weeks ago, several members of the Education and the Workforce 
Committee were briefed on the scheme, the manipulation of the Chinese 
Communist Party on higher education in the USA, and we were all 
shocked. It was a shocking report, and we wanted to share the truth of 
how China is infiltrating and taking control over higher education in 
the United States.
  Since 2013, $12 billion has poured into our higher education system 
from foreign sources. China is by far the largest of foreign donations 
since that time.
  Between 2013 and 2020, U.S. universities accepted nearly a billion 
dollars from Chinese donations. The tuition paid by Chinese students is 
estimated to be over $12 billion per year. It is time we look at this 
influence and take it seriously.
  It started over 20 years ago, Mr. Speaker, that China has been 
playing this game of infiltration, manipulation, and trying to purchase 
influence. It started with this game they play that they call the 
Confucius Institutes. These centers teach Chinese languages and culture 
but avoid discussing China's widespread human rights abuses and present 
Taiwan as undisputed Chinese territory.
  They are simply a propaganda machine funded and directed by the 
Chinese Government, and we haven't even gotten started on what they are 
stealing from us, Mr. Speaker.
  Tonight, members of the Education and the Workforce Committee and 
other invited Members are going to tell the story of just how far China 
has been infiltrating our university system. You are going to hear how 
top colleges and universities have not fully reported donations from 
foreign sources, including that of the Chinese Government.
  You are going to hear the administration is not enforcing existing 
laws requiring full reporting of these foreign sources.
  Universities, in their desire to seek donations from the public, 
sometimes unexpectedly or overtly take money from foreign sources and, 
in this case, many times from the Chinese Government.
  You are going to hear also how the United States is losing the 
technology edge that we have long enjoyed for many years in computing, 
science, and engineering, all kinds of energy sources where we were the 
dominant player, but now because of theft and China's influence in our 
university system, those edges in technology are now leaning China's 
way. You are going to hear about that.

                              {time}  2045

  So, Mr. Speaker, as we begin tonight, I just want to say that it is 
long overdue that we hear the truth and we are fully aware how bad 
China is.
  I would first yield a few minutes to the chair of Education and the 
Workforce Committee, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Bean for his leadership on 
the Education and the Workforce Committee and also his leadership in 
leading this Special Order tonight.
  It is a very important issue to the people of the United States, and 
I am very proud of him for taking the leadership and putting this 
Special Order together.
  Mr. Speaker, we are engaged in a new era of warfare with our foreign 
adversaries who are vying for influence and control not only over 
America but especially over America's postsecondary education system.
  Losing on this 21st century battleground has serious consequences for 
free thought, economic competitiveness, and national security.
  Foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party have used power 
and monetary influence to infiltrate colleges and universities to grow 
their sphere of influence in American society.
  Mr. Speaker, make no mistake: When we talk about China and its 
exertion of force and its exertion of power, we are not talking about 
the Chinese people. We are talking about the Chinese Communist Party, 
the CCP.
  So let us be clear on that tonight so that nobody mistakes who we see 
as the enemy. It is the Chinese Communist Party.
  At face value, foreign contributions coming into universities might 
seem harmless, but the reality is foreign money often comes with 
strings attached. We know with the CCP, there are always strings 
attached.
  Every dollar that institutions accept from undisclosed foreign 
entities that do not share our Nation's values sends them deeper into a 
dangerous entanglement that undermines our Republic.
  For years, this influence scheme has been going on, yet neither the 
Chinese Communist Party nor institutions of higher education have faced 
repercussions for their actions.
  Indeed, during the Trump administration, it discovered $6.5 billion 
in previously unreported foreign money to universities from adversarial 
countries.
  For the first time, real progress was being made to hold institutions 
accountable for undisclosed contributions.
  But mysteriously, when the Biden administration came into office, all 
progress toward discovering these contributions stopped.
  The Department of Education is shirking its duty to enforce the law 
and has abandoned robust scrutiny of undisclosed foreign gifts and 
contracts that violate section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965.
  Mr. Speaker, we have known since 1965 that the potential for damage 
done to our institutions through foreign contributions was possible.
  Section 117 is the single most important enforcement tool at the 
Biden administration's disposal to protect against the threats posed by 
our foreign adversaries attempting to steal research and buy off 
students and faculty on our Nation's campuses.

[[Page H1752]]

  Republicans have sent multiple letters to Secretary Cardona demanding 
answers about this foreign money. Yet, this administration continues 
its pattern of stonewalling Congress with limited and woefully 
insufficient responses.
  This is a part of Congress' oversight responsibility, Mr. Speaker, 
and is not being done on a whim.
  It is unacceptable that the Biden administration has exercised 
minimal effort to expose the lack of integrity happening at so-called 
``elite'' institutions.
  The possible consequences of the department's limited engagement are 
dire. Section 117 is effective only if it is enforced.
  That is why congressional oversight is necessary to hold the 
Department of Education accountable to enforce the law.
  We must fight money and coercion beginning with accountability and 
transparency. Without accountability and transparency, the Chinese 
Communist Party could win this new-age battle because America has been 
fighting with one hand tied behind its back.
  Mr. Speaker, I say: No more. My Republican colleagues and I will not 
stop until we see rigorous enforcement of section 117 that hold the 
universities responsible and hold the Chinese Communist Party 
responsible for what it may be trying to do.
  Mr. BEAN. Dr. Foxx, thank you so much. You are doing such a great job 
as chairman of Education and the Workforce. Thank you for the 
opportunity to serve on that committee.
  Thank you for highlighting the decades-long campaign that has 
manifested into bigger problems for America by the Chinese Communist 
Party.
  America's education system is being purchased and manipulated by 
China. Since 2013, $12 billion has flooded in from foreign sources to 
U.S. colleges and universities, including more than a billion from 
communist China.
  Rather than forcing colleges and universities to comply with 
reporting requirements under section 117 of the Higher Education Act, 
this administration is playing into the hands of the Chinese Communist 
Party by refusing to pursue enforcement.
  For the past 2 years, Mr. Speaker, this administration has been 
trying to distract the American people of the very real threat China 
poses with its far-left policies. That ends tonight.
  Up next to help spread the word of exactly how bad an actor China is, 
is my friend and colleague, the gentleman from California.
  He is the chairman of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee. Mr. 
Speaker, I yield 8 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Kiley).
  Mr. KILEY. Thank you very much to my colleague from Florida. I 
appreciate you identifying this very important issue, the attempt of 
the Chinese Communist Party to gain influence at American universities 
in very concerning ways because it so clearly highlights the mentality 
and strategy of the CCP, that they understand where the battle lines 
are being drawn in the 21st century.

  The truly concerning thing is that increasingly, China is beating the 
United States at its own game, outpacing us and the rest of the world 
in key areas of technological advancements.
  Through their actions, the CCP has shown an understanding that the 
21st century will belong to the most innovative Nation, the one that is 
able to harness the whole power of new technologies.
  China has known for decades that Nation was unquestionably the United 
States. But what we have seen over the last 2 decades is that China has 
dramatically ramped up its own investment in research and development, 
cutting into America's traditional dominance.
  From 2000 to 2019, China's share of global R&D quadrupled to nearly a 
quarter, while our share slid from 37 percent to just 27 percent.
  China has increased its R&D spending by nearly 16 times over the same 
period and plans to compound its R&D investments by an additional 7 
percent annually.
  By contrast, Federal R&D investment in the United States has never 
surpassed .8 percent of GDP over the last decade.
  Of course, spending isn't the only metric that matters. The United 
States is also increasingly losing the talent battle, and the trend 
lines are getting worse.
  China has consistently graduated more STEM Ph.D.s than the United 
States, and of course, many are getting educated right here in the 
United States.
  Looking at the publication of peer-reviewed articles and journals, 
Chinese scholars surpassed the United States in the last decade.
  In 2020, China published 38 percent more peer-reviewed articles than 
the United States and is on track to extend this gap even further over 
the next 5 years.
  This all puts into perspective the pervasive attempts by the Chinese 
Communist Party to gain leverage over American universities.
  Even though colleges and universities are required to report foreign 
gifts and contracts under section 117 of the Higher Education Act, over 
$6.5 billion in unreported Federal money received by colleges has 
already been uncovered.
  The Biden administration has done little to enforce this reporting 
requirement or open new investigations into how China is influencing 
our higher education system even though China wields the spending to 
co-opt innovative research. China has signaled that intellectual 
property is absolutely key to its long-term goals.
  For years, the CCP sought to acquire IP through outright theft from 
U.S. companies or by gaining influence in our universities.
  But what we also have to acknowledge in this discussion is that their 
strategy has gotten much more sophisticated.
  In addition to outright theft, China has signaled its plans to, in 
fact, elevate the status of the China National Intellectual Property 
Administration to make it a top-level independent agency.
  While President Biden didn't mention IP at all in his most recent 
state of the Union address, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks about 
IP frequently.
  ``We will increase investment in science and technology through 
diverse channels and strengthen legal protection of intellectual 
property rights . . .'', he said in his speech at the opening of the 
20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last year.
  So clearly, the United States is at risk of forfeiting our 
technological edge at a time when it is more important than ever to 
protect our national interests.
  To outcompete China, we need to out-innovate China, and that requires 
policymakers to act with urgency, not only to protect our companies and 
universities from Chinese influence but also to change the policy 
environment in ways that promote and protect American innovation.
  Unfortunately, recent policy changes have done just the opposite. For 
example, FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed sweeping new rules to 
unilaterally ban employers from using noncompete agreements, something 
California, by the way, has already done.
  This will hamstring employers in the most competitive, trade-secret-
rich sectors: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and provision 
manufacturing, and render the United States less competitive than 
China.
  Meanwhile, administrative processes at the U.S. Patent and Trademark 
Office are creating headaches and worse for innovators seeking to 
defend their patents.
  A quasi-judicial administrative body within the USPTO, the Patent 
Trial and Appeal Board or PTAB, has become the favorite forum for 
companies to challenge the validity of patents they are accused of 
infringing.
  This works to the disadvantage of innovators and small businesses who 
must defend their IP in court and the PTAB simultaneously, reducing the 
incentive to invent in the first place.
  But here is the good news. The United States has a proven track 
record of beating authoritarian governments in strategic technological 
competitions. We didn't beat the Soviet Union to the Moon by chance. It 
required a generational investment in cutting-edge research and 
development, which was enabled by American citizens solving the 
toughest technological problems of their day.
  We have that same capacity in the challenges we now face in the 21st 
century, but that requires a change in how

[[Page H1753]]

we approach intellectual property and innovation in this country.
  I think that the issue that is being highlighted today, the outright 
attempts by the CCP to go to our centers of research, of higher 
learning, our centers of intellectual life in this country shows that 
they understand the stakes and it is time that we here in Congress and 
throughout our government understand that as well.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my fellow subcommittee chair for bringing this 
issue to our attention.

                              {time}  2100

  Mr. BEAN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Kiley).
  Mr. Speaker, for those just tuning in, China is manipulating and 
trying to peddle influence among our higher universities, and Members 
are standing up and saying enough.
  A few weeks ago, and to great amazement, we saw this Chinese spy 
balloon that cruised over our most sensitive sites in our country.
  We were told we were blocking it from transmitting any data at the 
time, but now we have found that that spy balloon was transmitting 
pictures and information of our most sensitive military and nuclear 
sites in real time.
  Who knows? I don't know if we will ever find out the true damage of 
that espionage break. Why on earth it wasn't shot down, I don't know. 
But what about the things we can't see? We can't see what China is 
doing to buy influence and to infiltrate our university systems.
  Mr. Speaker, somebody that is going to tell us his angle on it is a 
gentleman who was part of a delegation that just last week went to 
Taiwan, went on an Asia tour to meet with leaders about just exactly 
what is going on over there.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Moran).
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague, Mr. Bean of 
Florida, for gathering us here this evening to raise awareness of the 
rising influence of foreign adversaries in our institutions of higher 
education, namely China and the Chinese Communist Party.
  As he mentioned, I have just returned from a Foreign Affairs 
congressional delegation trip to the Indo-Pacific region where we met 
with the leaders of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to talk about the 
aggression of China not just from a military standpoint, but from a 
diplomatic and an economic standpoint.
  Here tonight, we are talking about the aggression of China to take 
over America through its educational institutions.
  Universities across the Nation are being exploited by the Chinese 
Communist Party and other foreign adversaries, with the CCP leading 
efforts to infiltrate college campuses to steal our intellectual 
property, spread propaganda, and collect information to send back to 
China.
  Our institutions of higher learning play a vital role in preparing 
our workforce for not only the next step in their career, but in 
evolving as contributing members of our society.
  On college campuses across the United States, China has sponsored 
ambassadors to enroll in American institutions called ``Confucius 
Institutes'' to take advantage of domestic resources while influencing 
public perception that China is somehow compassionate and does not pose 
an economic or security threat to this Nation. They are doing it all 
within our borders, and it is simply false.
  The Confucius Institutes aim to expand the Chinese footprint on 
universities around the world, influencing our students and threatening 
academic freedom.
  In the United States alone, China has spent over $150 million 
developing these programs by planting over 100 of the institutions. 
Today, there are 13 Confucius Institutes in the United States, with 
over 100 of the previously established institutes having closed or 
being in the process of closing, thankfully.
  These so-called culture centers have given universities a direct line 
of communication with foreign adversaries, in addition to a direct 
source of foreign funding.
  By law, universities receiving gifts from foreign countries with a 
value of over $250,000 are required to report these donations to the 
Department of Education.
  Several prestigious universities, however, across the United States, 
including universities such as the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, 
Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown received funding--lots of funding, 
millions and millions of dollars of funding--from foreign adversaries 
between 2014 and 2017. Yet, they failed to disclose any of these 
donations to the Department of Education.
  I wonder why.
  During the Trump administration, the Department of Education actually 
enforced the law and investigated these reports and donations ensuring 
that universities were compliant in this reporting.
  As we all know, transparency is the key to accountability in this 
country. Yet here we see a lack of transparency on the part of these 
universities.
  Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration, who has been weak on 
foreign policy and the promotion of American interests, has not yet 
investigated the nearly $6.5 billion in unreported foreign money 
received by colleges and universities during the Biden administration.
  I will repeat that again: $6.5 billion.
  And you ask, what is that money buying the Chinese Communist Party?
  The administration's failure to enforce the law and ensure 
transparency and accountability of foreign money funneled into the 
United States institutions is dangerous, and it reveals a lack of 
desire to protect American national security and our values from bad 
actors.
  The stake that the Chinese Government has in universities has given 
the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party a seat 
at the table of our educational institutions, a seat they should not 
have. They are strong-arming free speech and academic freedom. They are 
rewriting history, the history of the Chinese Communist Party, and they 
are doing it all through the dissolution of our free speech and our 
academic freedom, those pillars of our society.

  As Members of Congress, it is of the utmost importance that we have 
accountability over the foreign dollars entering our college campuses 
and universities and ensure that dangerous ideals are not being 
promoted across the country through the Chinese Communist Party and 
other foreign adversaries that would use this information and these 
investments against our national security efforts.
  American universities and colleges are esteemed for brilliant 
research and academia. We must not tolerate foreign governments 
stealing critical information in these premier research programs for 
the purpose of using it against the United States and weakening our 
national security.
  I can tell you again from experience, these past couple of weeks have 
opened my eyes to the reality of the threat that is the Chinese 
Communist Party. Again, it is not just our diplomatic status, it is not 
just our economic warfare that we are engaging in, it is not just what 
we are seeing from a military presence that they have around the island 
of Taiwan. Know that it is now indeed in our educational institutions.
  We must push back on every front. It is a multi-front fight that we 
cannot lose, or we will lose this Nation.
  Mr. BEAN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, our Nation's higher education system is being purchased 
and manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party. You have heard about it 
and we keep hearing about it. China can't keep up with our Nation's 
unrelenting free market system that is constantly innovating, so the 
only way they see to catch up with us is to cheat and steal our 
intellectual property and infiltrate our university systems and steal 
our discoveries. It has got to end.
  Let's hear more about what China is doing to manipulate our 
university systems.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. 
Owens), the distinguished chair of the Subcommittee on Higher Education 
and Workforce Development.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague for yielding.
  Here are some facts you need to know about the abysmal record of the 
Chinese Communist Party on human rights and against our American way of 
freedom.

[[Page H1754]]

  China has carried out the torture, forced sterilization, and sexual 
abuse of over 1 million Uyghurs.
  China has ranked 175 out of 180 countries that lack free press, and 
it is notorious for jailing journalists with dissenting voices. Chinese 
officials have detained, tortured, and executed protestors with 
impunity.
  Since 2013, U.S. colleges and universities have received more than $1 
billion in gifts and contracts from the Chinese Communist Party and its 
affiliated sources.
  As a result, professors, student groups, and guest speakers critical 
of the Communist Party's human rights abuses have been silenced, 
threatened, and de-platformed. The China regime is spreading anti-
democratic, anti-American propaganda by funneling large sums of money 
into education.
  Sadly, we have Americans who have and continue to think that turning 
their back on our Nation for self-aggrandizement is okay. This profit 
over patriotism culture that has infested our country and our 
institutions of higher learning is okay.
  This must end.
  It is a national security issue when the Communist Party simply buys 
onto platforms that manipulate our children, their education, the 
vision and ability to appreciate this great country.
  We have for years allowed the Chinese Communist Party to find a home 
in our high schools and colleges with their Confucius Institutes.

                              {time}  2110

  Granted the credibility of our institutions and the pipeline of our 
children, they indoctrinate them into their form of government, one 
that can only survive through tyranny, is good, and that our form of 
government, a representative republic that thrives on freedom, is bad.
  It is on these college campuses where the stealing of our 
intellectual property, technology, and national security secrets is not 
looked upon as betrayal, which it is at the highest, but instead deemed 
a necessity to build bigger, more spacious buildings and to hire more 
bureaucrats committed to teach our impressible and trusting children 
that Marxism is okay after all.
  The manipulation of our children on American soil, paid for by 
American taxpayers, is unacceptable. Again, the profit over patriotism 
culture that has infested too many of our higher education institutions 
must stop now.
  As we watched a slow-moving Communist spy balloon that took a week to 
lumber over our Nation, doing figure eights over our military bases; 
then, as we learned this morning of the secret Communist Chinese police 
station spying on, intimidating, and disrupting free speech of Chinese 
Americans in New York City, we have to wonder what is really being 
taught or not taught in our educational system.
  It is indeed broken if our past generations taught by these 
institutions can see the blatant attacks on our American culture and 
think there is nothing wrong; that the presence of misery, chaos, 
hopelessness, and divisiveness throughout our Nation is normal and 
acceptable.
  From establishing a bipartisan select committee on China, to reducing 
reliance on foreign adversaries for our American energy needs, the 
House GOP has delivered on its promise outlined in our Commitment to 
America; that is, to counter the malignant influence of China in 
corporate boardrooms, social media, and on college and high school 
campuses. We have done so in our first 100 days.
  As the chairman of the Higher Education and Workforce Development 
Subcommittee, I am proud to lead the charge in ensuring the freedom of 
speech of every American on every college campus and to preserve the 
integrity of America's higher education.
  I am committed to championing the freedom and liberty we enjoy as 
Americans. As was the statement made by a Japanese Admiral after the 
attack on Pearl Harbor and the deaths of close to 3,000 Americans, ``I 
fear we've awakened a sleeping giant.''
  To the Biden administration that has for 2 years been asleep as our 
Nation has faced threats from within and without, the American people 
will not stand by and let our children be indoctrinated out of our 
belief in freedom, our American way, and the history of proud Americans 
who sacrificed their blood, sweat, and tears to grant us this great 
gift.
  You have awakened a sleeping giant, a freedom-loving we the people.
  Mr. BEAN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, our Nation's higher education 
system is being purchased and manipulated by the Chinese Communist 
Party. You have heard from various Members giving you details of how it 
is done, but we need somebody who can give us the big picture.
  We need somebody who can give us big ideas. We need somebody who can 
give us big solutions. There is only one guy that can do that, Mr. 
Speaker.
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs).
  Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to 
me.
  There is a great Chinese scholar, Professor Sheridan wrote a book 
called ``China in Disintegration,'' and he analyzed the fall of China's 
government in the early 1900s before you moved to kind of an anarchical 
situation where you saw the rise of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang 
versus, ultimately, post-World War II Mao Zedong and the Chinese 
Communist long march as they marched around and eventually the U.S. 
wavered and China fell to communism under Chairman Mao.
  What was the premise of ``China in Disintegration''? It was an 
analysis of why great powers, great nations, great empires fail. They 
fail because of a loss of geographical integrity. They fail for--that 
is the first thing.
  The second thing is they fail because their currency loses value and 
trust. Once that goes, and the culture begins to change, they are 
either overextended, or they allow individuals with malevolent 
intentions to come into their country and influence the population.
  So what do we have? We have a wide-open border, so we have lost our 
geographical integrity. We have $31.4 trillion in national debt and 
rising inflation.
  We have nations like India contemplating moving to the Chinese yuan 
for their currency of exchange instead of the dollar. They have settled 
on the rupee.
  We have lost economic integrity as well.
  What has happened? Well, China views, as they always have, themselves 
as the center of the universe. They have viewed Westerners as 
barbarians. Mao and his ambitions were superseded ultimately by Deng 
Zhao Ping, who said we are going to put a unique spin and have a 
hybridized economy, and it is going to have some elements of 
capitalism, but it is going to be Communistic overall.
  Now, why did he do that? Because they were failing as a Communist 
state.
  We built the Chinese middle class. We built the Chinese deep water 
navy. We gave China superior telemetry.
  Ladies and gentlemen, we have basically given China our technology. 
What we haven't given them, they have stolen.
  Now you have reached a point where you have a CEO of a company like 
Nike, who says, we are not an American company anymore, we are a 
Chinese company.
  How have they done that? There are literally tens of thousands of 
Chinese national students in our universities. When we talk about the 
billions of dollars that have come in in donations, a more insidious 
thing is the out-of-State tuition that funds these State universities 
who rely on out-of-State tuition, so they come in and they pay that 
tuition.

  It is not a normalized situation. To come over here as a student, you 
have to be a member of the CCP.
  There are 330 million people in the CCP, as many as we have living in 
the United States today.
  They send their students over here and they exit. They leave and they 
go home with what? Our technology and experience that we have given 
them to defeat ourselves.
  We can continue to put our head in the sand and hope that it isn't 
true. There are those who believe it is xenophobic to talk about this.
  I appreciate the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bean) being here tonight 
and leading this Special Order because Americans need to know the peril 
that we are in because China doesn't view us as an economic opponent or 
competitor. They view us as an adversary, a geopolitical adversary.

[[Page H1755]]

  For them, they want to be the world's dominant hegemon. That isn't me 
saying it. You can look at any modern writing within the top leadership 
of the CCP. It is pretty clear.
  I would suggest that we need to take back our educational 
institutions. Couple that with the integration, we need to decouple our 
economic integration and dependence upon China. They know we are 
dependent. They know they can exploit that. We saw how they exploited 
it just recently in the COVID-19 epidemic.
  Let's be wise. We are going to have to take action.

                              {time}  2120

  Mr. BEAN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, our Nation's higher education 
system is being purchased and manipulated by the Chinese Communist 
Party. Tonight, you have heard from various members of a fantastic 
committee and other Members, led by Dr. Virginia Foxx, shining the 
light on just how bad it is, just how blind an eye that we have turned 
to it for the last 20 years.
  We now realize through donations and purchases and influence in 
sending their kids here to school, as well as something called the 
Confucius Institutes, that it is all for the propaganda and a way for 
China to infiltrate and manipulate our higher education system.
  Mr. Speaker, where do we go from here? We have work to do, including 
alerting America, which is what we are doing tonight, but also alerting 
our higher ed, our leadership in our universities and colleges, to let 
them be wary of any foreign donation coming into their institutions, 
particularly anything coming from China should be a red flag.
  The Department of Education should immediately enforce existing laws. 
Should we make a new law? How about enforcing the laws that are already 
on the books requiring these institutions, some of the biggest names in 
higher ed, to report foreign gifts and grants?
  The Biden administration should ban Confucius Institutes and all 
collaborations between U.S. institutions and Chinese entities 
affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of State Security immediately.
  Congress should also consider withholding State and Federal funds 
from colleges and universities that resist efforts to eliminate CCP 
influence operations.
  Lastly, the State Department--Mr. Biggs said it so well. The State 
Department must review applications from adversarial countries, 
including the CCP, the background and research plan of every applicant 
for a student visa. We need to say no. We need to say no to the CCP 
coming in, getting our information, and then going back home.
  We have lots to do, but it starts with alerting the American people. 
We have done that tonight. The rest of the work is up to this Congress. 
It is up to the administration to enforce our laws and to hold these 
universities and China accountable for exactly what they are doing, 
which is manipulating and using undue influence in our higher education 
system. It stops now and going forward.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________