'The universities have been compromised': China expert weighs in on China threat
As part of ongoing coverage on China’s influence on college and university campuses, Campus Reform interviewed renowned China expert Steven Mosher.
Mosher said China poses an existential threat to the U.S., and explained how the government is recruiting “traitors” on campuses to steal research.
As part of ongoing coverage of the Chinese threat and influence on college and university campuses, Campus Reform interviewed renowned China expert and Population Research Institute President Steven Mosher.
Mosher told Campus Reform that universities, along with Wall Street and the media, have been compromised by China. He added that restrictions should be placed on Chinese foreign students and university relationships with China.
“The universities have been compromised by Chinese money,” Mosher said. “The Department of Education believes now that at least $900 million has been given over the last six years to 115 universities and colleges. Harvard is the big winner.”
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“We need to put in place restrictions, legal restrictions, on this kind of behavior,” Mosher declared. “I think we ought to be cutting back on the number of Chinese researchers and scholars who are allowed to come to our universities, the number of Chinese students who are allowed to come to our universities, whether it should be a blanket prohibition or whether it should be a prohibition on majoring in science and engineering and the other aspects of high tech that we know there has been rampant thievery in, a rampant cyber espionage, rampant high, you know, hands-on espionage.”
Mosher also slammed the media for cozying up to China in exchange for the access he says will never be granted. He called for Chinese companies to be delisted from the U.S. stock exchange.
“I think a lot of people in the United States and elite circles have been compromised, and they’ve been compromised by Chinese money. Wall Street financial firms have made literally billions of dollars off offering IPOs...for Chinese firms which don’t actually, you know, abide by International Accounting Standards.”
In addition to buying influence, Mosher discussed Chinese influence on college campuses via Confucius Institutes. He also explained the effort behind professors and staffers who have been caught up in the Thousand Talents Plan, or what Mosher calls, the Thousand Traitors Plan.
“The Chinese Communist Party set up the Thousand Talents Program back in 2010, and it was at the time, it was a public effort to recruit foreign scholars to come to China and share their research, share their knowledge about cutting-edge technologies, especially things like artificial intelligence and robotics and genomic research and other areas that are part of the China 2025 plan to dominate the high-tech high ground of the future,” Mosher said, before warning about the scope of the plan.
“This isn’t a small effort. There have been as of 2018, with two years ago now, I think there were three hundred and twenty-six foreign scholars, many of them American-recruited in the Thousand Talents Program.”
“The problem is that we in the United States, at our elite universities and state-run universities, fund, using literally billions of dollars, cutting-edge research in every area of high-tech China’s interested in,” Mosher added.
He referenced Harvard professor Charles Lieber as an example of professors selling U.S.-funded research to China. Lieber was recently charged for lying to the federal government about his ties to Chinese science initiatives. Mosher estimated there could be several hundreds of such professors and university staffers who are currently being investigated.
“Unfortunately for Professor Lieber, he never told Harvard University that he was stealing the crown jewels of his research and selling it to China for pennies on the dollar,” Mosher said. “I mean he may have gotten a million dollars or two million dollars, but the U.S. taxpayer paid $15 million for his research, which again, he sold to China and didn’t report to the NIH, didn’t report to Harvard University, that he was doing this. So I call this--this isn’t the Thousand Talents Program...this is the Thousand Traitors Program because the people, the Americans, who participate in this program do not reveal that they’re taking their cutting-edge research paid for by American taxpayers and selling it to China.”
When asked why such relationships with China are legal, Mosher said officials are left to charge individuals on other related crimes and not the direct relationships with China.
“[Chinese and professor partnerships are] not illegal right now, that’s why we’re doing the same thing to the people in the Thousand Traitors Program that they did to Al Capone 90 years ago,” he said. “They got him on tax evasion, so they’re getting Professor Charles Lieber and others like him on charges of tax evasion, not reporting this income they received from foreign sources. And they’re also getting them for filling out false forms with the NIH (National Institute of Health) grant process where they say they’re not receiving any other money for this research that they’re applying to NIH.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @eduneret
