Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t sugarcoat his vision for future world relations during his Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation visit in November. China is building a “shared vision for mankind,” one in which it unseats the United States as the world’s top superpower.
At the same meeting, the Chinese Communist Party head revealed another tool in his foreign influence arsenal: all-expense paid trips to China for American students. Xi is prepared to bring 50,000 American students to China over the next five years.
Muscatine High School in Iowa took Xi up on his offer in January and sent two dozen students to China, with help from the Chinese Ministry of Education, China’s Consulate in Chicago, and Sarah Lande, a local woman who claims she’s an “old friend” of Xi.
What’s China’s return on investment? As Lande told China Daily, a state-owned outlet, the trips help families “just turn off the negatives and respect China for more than you see in the paper.”
In other words, Xi and his allies want students to remember their free trips to China, not Uyghur genocide, China’s ongoing enslavement of Congolese children in cobalt mines, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, which killed an estimated 30 million to 45 million people. American schools are playing right into Xi’s hand.
To boot the U.S. as the world’s top economic and military power, Xi and his government must convince young Americans to reject the skepticism older generations harbor toward communism. That’s why the regime in Beijing has prioritized embedding itself in the American education system through Confucius Institute programming. It is why the Chinese government is staunchly opposed to a U.S. bill that would force TikTok to separate from its parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese company subject to laws that compel businesses to assist the Chinese government’s data collection efforts.
And it is why Xi is inviting American students on free trips to China.
Muscatine students weren’t the first to receive Xi’s offer. In 2015, Xi traveled to Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington, and invited students to China shortly thereafter. Xi’s visit left one student with the impression that “there’s unity between these two countries.” Sociology teacher Nathan Bowling said he was a “big fan of China,” according to a story in China Daily.
Parents Defending Education started sounding the alarm last July when we released our Little Red Classrooms report. Across the U.S., 143 school districts had fostered ties with the Chinese government through its Ministry of Education or other entities affiliated with the CCP.
These ties ostensibly provided K-12 students the opportunity to learn about the Chinese language and culture. In some cases, however, it led American schools to foster relationships with schools in China tied to its defense industry, including its nuclear weapons program.
Lincoln High School recently reignited its partnership with YuCai Middle School in China through a connection at the Confucius Institute of the State of Washington. The CIWA was created in conjunction with Sichuan University in China, according to a Pacific Lutheran University webpage. Sichuan University’s proximity to China’s nuclear weapons program makes it “a very high risk” security threat, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Leaders at the local, state, and federal levels must act to protect children from the influence of the CCP. We expect children to have a sense of self-preservation in the face of a threat. We must demand the same of those who teach and lead them.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Controlled Applications Act, which would force the separation of ByteDance and TikTok, is a good step. We must also weed out CCP influence from our schools. Reps. Kevin Hern (R-OK), David Joyce (R-OH), and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) have introduced legislation to curb China ties in K-12 and higher education. House and Senate education committees should demand that public schools hand over Confucius programming documents and information about China-sponsored trips.
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The House Energy and Commerce Committee last year took TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to task during a hearing focused on the app’s shoddy security protocols. University and K-12 school officials fostering ties with the Chinese government, especially high-risk Chinese universities, should face the same line of questioning. Governors and state education departments, too, should do everything in their power to investigate and disentangle the CCP from American schools.
Xi is no friend to our nation, our schools, or American children. It is clear that China poses the greatest existential threat to freedom in the U.S. and throughout the world. School administrators would be wise to check the “respectfully decline” box on Xi’s invitations and help stop the CCP’s infiltration into our already troubled education system.
Alex Nester is an investigative fellow for Parents Defending Education. Before joining Parents Defending Education, Alex reported on education at the Washington Free Beacon.
