According to an investigative report by the Clarion Project, a conservative U.S. nonprofit organization, a number of U.S. post-secondary institutions, including Yale University, omitted to report receiving donations from China, Russia, and Qatar that amounted to more than 1.5 billion yuan (U.S. dollars). Earlier, the U.S. State Department had urged U.S. universities to withdraw funds invested in Chinese companies, and at the same time, the Department of Education, in an effort to assess the impact of Chinese Confucius Institutes on U.S. universities, mandated that all universities report all foreign donations to a new Department of Education website.
Alex VanNess, a data analyst with the Clarion Project, said that if it weren’t for the new Department of Education policy, many universities would see nothing wrong with using these donations to help foreign regimes flex their soft power over American students.
According to the Wall Street Journal, several U.S. educational institutions have poured money into China-related stock markets because of China’s growing importance in emerging markets, a move that contrasts with the Trump administration’s increasingly hostile policy toward China.
State Department Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach wrote earlier: “Studies have shown that most U.S. universities invest their funds directly or indirectly in China, either through the U.S. stock market or through emerging market index funds.
Generally speaking, the investment policies of university funds do not have to be fully disclosed, but according to the Clarion Project, these universities and colleges are not only investing in Chinese companies, but they are also omitting more than $1.5 billion in donations from China and other countries that are not friendly to the United States from the authorities.
According to the Clarion Project’s report, from 2014 to 2019, U.S. post-secondary institutions, including Yale and Cornell, recorded a total of $11 billion in foreign donations, but the true figure should be $14 billion, the survey found, with Cornell, Texas A&M, Colorado Boulder, and Yale being the universities with the largest gaps in reporting to the Department of Education.
According to the report, Cornell’s earliest reported foreign donations were $340 million, but the true figure was $1.3 billion, of which $800 million came from Qatar. Colorado Boulder reported $55 million, but the real number was $340 million. Yale University reported $128 million, but the real number is $496 million, of which more than $42 million came from China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Russia.
According to earlier statistics, there are more than 100 post-secondary institutions with Confucius Institutes in the U.S. For this reason, the U.S. Department of Education has mandated that all universities report these foreign contributions through a new website that the department has created to assess foreign influence on U.S. colleges and universities.
If it weren’t for the Department of Education’s increased scrutiny, this omission would have continued,” says Van Ness, a data analyst with the Clarion Project, “and the universities still wouldn’t have felt the need to report these donations to the Department of Education, they wouldn’t have felt the urgency.
As for the State Department’s concern about U.S. university funds investing in China or in emerging market indices, Karatz has warned universities about the risks of investing in Chinese companies, which may be forced to delist from the U.S. market.
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