Shanda Global Investment, an investment firm owned by Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen, donated $35 million to fund an eponymous neuroscience institute at Caltech. Credit: Architect's rendering, Caltech facilities
American universities have reported more than a billion dollars in gifts from China and Hong Kong since 2014, making China their largest source of foreign donations.
During that same period, some U.S. government agencies and American academics themselves have grown increasingly concerned about China’s influence within U.S. academia, from the Thousand Talents recruitment program discussed in this week’s cover story to concerns about how the new Hong Kong Security Law could impact professors and students in the United States. So this week, The Wire is examining what we know and what we don’t about China’s funding of American universities.
Data Blackhole
U.S. universities are required to report foreign gifts of $250,000 or more to the Department of Education. However, the data is almost certainly incomplete. Since last year, the Education Department has opened a dozen investigations into schools for inadequate filings, and a 2019 Senate report identified, for
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Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative under Donald Trump, reflects on his decision to launch the trade war with China and begin the process of "strategic decoupling" — a process he says the U.S. must see through to the end.
