An overlooked detail in President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal is the role China may have played. Several of the documents were found in Biden’s affiliated Washington, D.C., think tank, which has received more than $50 million in Chinese donations over the past several years. The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, run in part by the University of Pennsylvania, has also hosted pro-China events in which there was little security and attendees reportedly were able to wander in and out of any number of rooms.
Whether China was able to access the classified documents Biden left there is unclear. But one thing is certain: China does not hand out money randomly. Its donations to universities, think tanks, and other organizations are deliberate and aimed at increasing its own strength at the expense of ours.
BIDEN MUST LET SENATE DO ITS JOB ON CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS
But the problem is not just that China is investing billions of dollars in U.S. institutions with the hope that they will become more friendly to its cause. It is that our institutions are doing the exact same thing. Many of the top universities in the country have invested parts of their endowments in Chinese companies. Even the federal government has become heavily tied to China’s economy by allowing one of its biggest pension funds to invest in China.
The Biden administration was forced to admit last year that investing federal employees’ and military service members’ retirement savings in a foreign adversary does, in fact, “undermine our national security.” To his credit, Biden also expanded a list of companies linked to the Chinese military-industrial complex from which U.S. companies must divest.
But there is much more that can and should be done to prevent China from buying influence in the U.S. and using our own investments against us. A bill introduced in the Senate in 2021 would subject all Chinese donations and gifts to U.S. universities to a national security review. Likewise, a bill introduced in the House last summer would discourage universities from investing their endowments in Chinese companies by imposing a hefty excise tax on such investments. And, more recently, a bill introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the new head of the House’s select committee on China, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) would force nonprofit organizations, university endowments, public pension plans, and any other tax-exempt entity to divest from Chinese companies or lose their tax-exempt status.
These reforms are important and long overdue. China would love nothing more than to destroy the U.S. from the inside out. And, as Biden’s scandal proves, the close financial partnerships our institutions enter into with Chinese companies gives the Chinese Communist Party the opportunity to do just that.
