Harvard’s China Ties Are a National Security Threat

Last week, The New York Times published yet another exposé on Harvard University’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The piece was just the latest revelation about how what was once America’s most prestigious academic institution has become ideologically and financially captured by Beijing.

According to the Times, “between 2010 and 2025, Harvard attracted $560 million in gifts and contracts from China and Hong Kong – more than any other American university.” The flow of money reached an all-time high of $78 million in 2020 – just as the COVID-19 pandemic, which most experts now believe escaped from a Chinese lab, was sweeping the country.

Those financial ties have bought far more than academic collaboration. According to a letter released in May by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Harvard has repeatedly cooperated with Chinese government-aligned entities, including some directly tied to China’s human rights abuses and military apparatus.

One of the most disturbing examples is Harvard’s training of members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary group under CCP control. Between 2019 and 2024, Harvard hosted representatives of XPCC at multiple events, including conferences organized through the Harvard China Health Partnership. This came despite the fact that XPCC was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2020 for its role in carrying out the CCP’s genocide against the Uyghur Muslim minority.

The Fifth Flagship Training Event on Health Care Financing, held in October 2023, featured speakers affiliated with the XPCC – but their nameplates were blurred in conference photographs, and their affiliations were not publicly disclosed. The Select Committee’s letter to Harvard President Alan Garber demanded an explanation and called for full transparency on how public funds may have been used to subsidize these partnerships.

Harvard’s links to the Chinese military extend far beyond health policy. In recent years, Harvard researchers have worked alongside scientists from institutions with close ties to the People’s Liberation Army, including Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, and Beihang University. These collaborations have included work on technologies with direct military applications, such as soft robotics, artificial intelligence, and quantum science.

In one case, Harvard and Zhejiang University researchers co-developed a microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles capable of controlled flight – technology with obvious surveillance and reconnaissance potential.

Other reports have raised concerns about research partnerships in the field of organ transplantation, despite a 2016 House resolution condemning China’s practice of state-sanctioned organ harvesting and a 2019 independent tribunal in London finding credible evidence of such crimes. The Committee noted that Harvard researchers continued collaborating with Chinese institutions on transplantation-related studies in the years that followed.

Harvard’s apparent ideological alignment with the CCP has also come under fire. In October 2024, China’s ambassador visited Harvard and declared that the CCP promotes “people’s democracy.” The school said nothing. But when two Chinese students protested the speech and were physically assaulted, it was the victims, not the perpetrator, who were disciplined by Harvard administrators. The Committee cited this episode as evidence that Harvard has become not just compromised by China, but actively hostile toward those who challenge the regime’s propaganda.

Faced with mounting evidence, top Republicans in Congress, including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Select Committee Chairman John Moolenaar, have demanded accountability. “Harvard-trained members of a sanctioned Chinese paramilitary group responsible for genocide and its researchers partnered with Chinese military universities on DoD-funded research,” Moolenaar said.

The Trump administration has acted decisively in response. In June, President Trump signed an executive order restricting the issuance of F-, M-, and J-visas to Harvard University, citing national security risks posed by the school’s foreign entanglements. The order authorizes the State Department to revoke existing visas and prohibits new ones from being issued until Harvard fully complies with federal oversight requests.

A White House fact sheet issued alongside the order noted that “Harvard has failed to disclose critical partnerships with entities affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army,” and concluded that it “cannot be trusted to safely host foreign nationals engaged in sensitive research.” The administration also froze $2.3 billion in pending federal research grants to the university.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem likewise announced plans to revoke Harvard’s certification under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for a Treasury Department investigation into whether the university violated sanctions laws.

These actions have sparked predictable backlash from Harvard officials and left-wing media outlets, but the facts are indisputable. The university has knowingly partnered with foreign regimes that oppose U.S. values and interests – and in some cases, those relationships have directly undermined America’s national security.

Even on the margins of this story, troubling examples abound. In 2020, Professor Mao Zhenhua, an influential Chinese economist closely tied to the CCP, spoke at a Harvard conference co-hosted with Wuhan University.

Defectors from the CCP say Mao is a member of the “92 Group,” a clique of high-level party insiders and the children of top officials, created to craft China’s financial strategy and build Western-style institutions under party control. He is credited with founding China’s first national credit rating agency in partnership with Moody’s and regularly speaks on economic issues aligned with CCP messaging.

While the Harvard event may not have been overtly political, Mao’s appearance fits a broader pattern of quiet normalization of CCP-aligned elites within Western academia. “You may be certain that the party’s intelligence was involved even if the school did not know it,” Dr. Sung Xinyi, a former top official at the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party, told me.

The Trump administration is right to view these developments as a threat. For too long, American universities believed that deeper engagement with the Chinese regime would promote openness and reform. In reality, that engagement has created a pipeline of intellectual capital and credibility flowing straight to Beijing – often with taxpayer support.

Harvard’s behavior cannot be chalked up to naivety or academic curiosity. It is a case study in how elite institutions can be subverted by a hostile foreign power. If universities like Harvard cannot be trusted to protect America’s national interests, then they should not be entrusted with federal money – or foreign students who could be attempting to undermine the United States.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.