Harvard’s China Ties Under Scrutiny as US Targets Student Visas

Following the Trump administration’s recent action to curb Harvard University’s international admissions and vet Chinese nationals studying in the United States for ties to the communist party, the Ivy League school’s extensive involvement with Beijing has come to the fore.

The oldest and wealthiest U.S. university is under increasing scrutiny for its controversial research collaboration with China, its role in educating Chinese regime officials, and providing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with a platform to spread its propaganda narratives and marginalize dissenting voices on U.S. soil.

On May 27, the State Department ordered a freeze on all student visa interviews. The next day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the department was tightening restrictions on visa applications by Chinese nationals and would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

Harvard has long been known among Chinese people for its role in educating the communist regime’s elites, including the progeny of the CCP leaders themselves. In 2014, one state-run media outlet, the Shanghai Observer, nicknamed the Ivy League university’s Kennedy School of Government an unofficial “Party school”—a reference to the institutions in China used to train and indoctrinate the regime’s cadres.

U.S. lawmakers have singled out Harvard for its China partnerships, including with sanctioned organizations believed to be complicit in the CCP’s human rights abuses, while other observers have criticized the school for allowing Beijing’s influence over the institution to expand unchecked.

In addition to receiving billions of dollars in U.S. federal funding, which the Trump administration is currently attempting to revoke, Harvard has accepted vast sums in donations and gifts from China, including from individuals affiliated with the CCP.

Li Yuanhua, former associate professor at Beijing’s Capital Normal University, told The Epoch Times that the Harvard–China relationship is packaged as academic cooperation and international exchange but serves the political and technological aims of communist China.

“The CCP is not just infiltrating one university, but the entire [U.S. academic] system,” Li said.

The DHS order was temporarily blocked by a U.S. judge on May 23 after Harvard filed a lawsuit.

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Students, faculty, and family gather for Commencement in Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Mass., on May 28, 2025. The Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s certification to enroll international students on May 22, but a U.S. judge temporarily blocked the order after the school filed a lawsuit. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Trump told reporters at a press conference on May 30 that he welcomes foreign students into the United States.“We just don’t want students that are causing trouble,” he said.In April and May, the U.S. government canceled nearly $3 billion in grant money for Harvard, also based on concerns that the school was not doing enough to tackle anti-Semitism on its campus.Harvard rejects those accusations, saying it has taken action to protect Jewish individuals, and has accused the Trump administration of retaliating against the school for “exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”Beijing has likewise protested the Trump administration’s decision to increase restrictions on Chinese visa holders. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning criticized the move at a May 28 press conference.

An Unofficial ‘Party School’ for the CCP

As with the anti-Semitism debate, concerns about Beijing’s influence on campus surfaced in April 2024 when Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the United States, gave a speech at Harvard.

During the April 20 event, Corset Wu, a student from Taiwan—the island state that the CCP claims is a rightful part of communist China’s territory—was swiftly dragged out by a mainland Chinese student after Wu interrupted Xie’s speech by holding up a placard and shouting criticisms of communist China.

Harvard placed Wu and two other students who participated in the protest on disciplinary probation, according to the school’s paper, the Harvard Crimson. The House Select Committee on the CCP obtained documents from Harvard showing that the academic dean told the mainland Chinese student in an email that his conduct had violated Harvard’s policy on physical violence but had decided not to take disciplinary action.

A White House official on May 23 told Reuters that “for too long, Harvard has let the Chinese Communist Party exploit it” and that the university had “turned a blind eye to vigilante CCP-directed harassment on-campus.”

Thousands of Chinese officials have attended Harvard for short-term study since the mid-1990s. In the 2000s, the school established its “China’s Leaders in Development” program for such students; November 1997 saw then-CCP chief Jiang Zemin visit Harvard and speak to an audience of 1,000. Jiang’s visit was reciprocated the next year by Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine, who was the first Harvard president to travel to mainland China while in that role.

Other senior Chinese officials who attended Harvard include former Vice President Li Yuanchao and retired Vice-Premier Liu He, who represented Beijing in trade talks with the United States during the first Trump administration; both studied at the Kennedy School.

Xi Mingze, daughter of Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping, began studying at Harvard in about 2010, before her father assumed leadership in late 2012. Spending her time at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus under a pseudonym, the younger Xi graduated in 2014.

Other children of senior officials to study at the Ivy League school include Alvin Jiang, grandson of the now-deceased Jiang, and Bo Guagua, son of Bo Xilai, the former Politburo member currently serving a life sentence for corruption.

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(Top) China's ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, delivers opening remarks at Harvard Kennedy School's China Conference in Cambridge, Mass., on April 20, 2024. (Bottom Left) Chinese deputy president Li Yuanchao attends the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 3, 2015. (Bottom Right) Former Vice Premier Liu He attends the closing session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 13, 2023. Learner Liu/The Epoch Times, Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images, Noel Celis/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

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Red Capital and ‘United Front’

In the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese authorities encouraged officials to study abroad as the regime implemented a limited series of economic and bureaucratic reforms.

But in the 2000s, as the CCP leadership deemphasized reform, stepped up human rights violations, and tightened control over Chinese society, Beijing began to use its economic weight to spread its influence and affirm the Party’s ideological priorities.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, since 2013, Harvard has attracted tens of millions of dollars in donations from China, some of which have been transited through Hong Kong and Singapore or even donated anonymously, making it difficult to trace the source of funds.

In 2014, Hong Kong real estate developer Ronnie Chan donated $350 million to Harvard, a record single donation for the school at the time, and the School of Public Health was named after his father, T.H. Chan.

An April 22 report by Strategy Risks, a China-focused consultancy group, described how the CCP “influences Harvard University to sometimes promote Beijing’s policy agenda” and expressed “doubts about Harvard’s effectiveness in limiting the Party’s authoritarian influences.”

The consultancy noted that Ronnie Chan is a trustee of the U.S.–China Exchange Foundation, which the U.S. government has designated as a foreign agent.

Wang He, a China current affairs commentator, told The Epoch Times that the cooperation between China and Harvard goes beyond mere academic exchange; rather, it is “essentially a cognitive warfare and united front project tailored by the CCP to the weaknesses of the Western system.”

The “united front” refers to the communist strategy of infiltrating organizations and swaying individuals not directly affiliated with the communist party so as to make partners out of and enlist them for the communist movement. The CCP used united front tactics to great effect in taking over mainland China in 1949, and it continues to maintain a United Front Work Department for the purpose of subverting Taiwan, the United States, and other countries.

Shen Ming-shih, a member of Taiwan’s National Defense and Security Research Institute, told The Epoch Times that apart from Harvard and other U.S. colleges, similar cases of academic capture by the CCP can be found in universities around the world, such as in the UK, Australia, and Europe.

“We should no longer accommodate the designs of a totalitarian system with a free and open attitude,” Shen said.

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Posters of U.S. universities, including Harvard University, are displayed at an overseas education agency in Beijing on May 29, 2025. Beijing ccriticized the Trump administration's action to curb Chinese student visas. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images

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Technology and Totalitarianism

Harvard’s extensive cooperation with China has led to criticism that such partnerships enable the CCP’s technological development, aid its repressive rule against the Chinese people, and spread Beijing’s authoritarianism abroad.

Wang He said that although the Trump administration’s recent moves regarding Harvard may seem heavy-handed to some, they are a necessary countermeasure to the CCP’s schemes.

“In the name of academia, the CCP regime exports ideology, infiltrates policymaking, poaches talent, and steals technology,” he said. “Trump’s action is an institutional closure of this influence chain.”

In December 2021, Charles Lieber, former chair of Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, was found guilty of concealing his involvement with the Thousand Talents Plan, an initiative by the CCP to recruit high-value individuals from around the world to work for Beijing.

Lieber was originally charged in 2020, along with Yanqing Ye, a Chinese woman enrolled at Boston University while enlisted in and performing duties as a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army—the CCP’s military—as well as Zheng Zaosong, a Chinese medical researcher at Harvard who attempted to smuggle biological specimens out of the United States. Ye is at large, having returned to China before she could be apprehended.

Among the Chinese nationals to whom Harvard programs have provided training are members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a Chinese regime paramilitary organization that has been implicated in “serious rights abuses” against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, China.

In 2020, the United States sanctioned the XPCC for its role in carrying out the CCP’s genocidal policies against the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic group that makes up nearly half of Xinjiang’s population.

On May 19, a group of U.S. lawmakers, including Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), sent a letter to Harvard University President Alan Garber requesting testimony and documentation about the school’s partnerships with the XPCC and other sanctioned groups.

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Harvard President Alan Garber arrives to speak at the 374th Harvard Commencement in Cambridge, Mass., on May 29, 2025. A group of U.S. lawmakers sent Garber a letter on May 19 seeking testimony and documents about Harvard’s ties to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and other sanctioned Chinese entities. Rick Friedman/AFP via Getty Images

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The XPCC began its partnership with the Harvard China Health Partnership in 2019, several years after the CCP’s policies of mass internment and forced labor against the Uyghur people began to come to light.

The lawmakers also raised concerns about possible collaboration between Harvard University and China in the field of organ transplantation—an industry that, in China, is believed to facilitate the mass murder of religious prisoners such as Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, and Christians.

They noted seven research papers on organ transplantation published between 2023 and 2024 by Harvard in collaboration with Chinese partners, one of which is titled “Transplantation of a beating heart: A first in man.”

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