Chinese students with CCP membership, military links ‘infiltrate’ U.S. universities, watchdog says

Chinese students and scientists who are members of the Chinese Communist Party, attended schools tied to the Chinese military or worked with companies connected to Beijing's theft of U.S. technology have “infiltrated” several top American universities, according to a watchdog group report that raises fresh concerns about America's vulnerabilities to its most fierce adversary.

A conservative non-profit oversight group, the American Accountability Foundation, reported that it found nearly two dozen Chinese academics working at elite U.S. schools and labs “who because of the dual-use threat of their research, close ties to the military research sector in China, and/or clear ties to the Chinese Communist Party should be expelled from the United States or never be re-admitted."

The research document — titled "Chinese Scientist Infiltration Threat Assessments" — says that Chinese students working at some of America’s top colleges, often receiving U.S. federal funding (some of it from the Pentagon) to conduct research into advanced technologies have troubling backgrounds which could pose a risk to U.S. national security.

Many Chinese scientists at U.S. institutions have CCP connections

The concerns raised by AAF’s new report include the fact that some of the Chinese scientists ensconced inside American academia and at cutting-edge U.S. labs appear to be members of the CCP and are affiliated with the CCP’s projects aimed at stealing U.S. technological know-how or military secrets, and worked with or for companies which serve the Chinese defense industry.

Some of these Chinese academics have clear links to problematic Chinese firms like Huawei or to China’s notorious Thousand Talents program, of which the FBI said "American businesses, universities, and laboratories should understand the potential risks and illegal conduct incentivized by Chinese talent plans and take steps to safeguard their trade secrets and intellectual property." At least one of the Chinese scientists appeared to have been employed by the Chinese government while in the U.S..

The schools employing the Chinese scientists named in the AAF report include Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell University, Brown University, Purdue University, the University of Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan, University of Florida, Penn State University, the Stevens Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, Indiana University, and the University of Southern California, as well as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The research areas focused on by these Chinese students — many of whom are receiving U.S. government funding for the lab research they are doing in the U.S. — include unmanned aerial drones, robotics, exoskeletons, artificial intelligence, large language models, viral research into highly-infectious pathogens, advanced materials research, next-gen semiconductors, advanced laser welding, quantum sensing, nuclear materials research, thermal-resilient electronics, electrical grid technologies, pharmaceuticals, applied mathematics, condensed matter physics, and other key areas which could have dual-use military applications.

U.S. is funding research by Chinese students with questionable histories

Funding for many of these Chinese students has come from varied sources such as the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Army Research Lab, the Office of Naval Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Laboratories, and other U.S. federal agencies.

The House Select Committee on the CCP had assessed just last year that “the CCP does not treat overseas study as an apolitical or purely academic exercise” but rather that “under its state-directed technology acquisition strategy, international education is viewed as a key vector for accessing cutting-edge science, engineering, and defense-related knowledge.”

The same House committee also warned about “a pervasive and deeply troubling pattern of U.S. taxpayer-funded research being conducted in collaboration with Chinese entities that are directly tied to China’s defense research and industrial base.”

Thomas Jones, the president of AAF, said in his research firm’s new report that he was warning about the “infiltration of the United States research enterprise by scientists and engineers from the People’s Republic of China.”

Jones argued that “the results are sobering; there are numerous examples of active members of the Chinese Communist Party being appointed to sensitive positions at U.S. universities and Chinese researchers being placed in positions that will allow them to transfer technology and research to the People’s Liberation Army and cultivate relationships with critical defense researchers in the U.S.”

Just the News requested comment from all 21 of the Chinese students named in the AAF report as being potential “threats” to the U.S., with none of the academics responding.

Just the News also requested comment from all the U.S. universities which had most recently employed or currently employ the Chinese scientists.

USC said it would provide a comment, but did not. The University of Florida confirmed one of the Chinese students in question had been at the school but "left UF in 2025 in good standing" without answering further questions. Michigan State said that "any inquiries regarding the employment status of a particular individual at the university must be made through the Freedom of Information Act." The Stevens Institute said that the Chinese academic in question "was a visiting scholar at Stevens from January 2024 through September 2025" and that "visiting scholars are unpaid and spend their time observing and assisting existing university faculty."

No other schools responded to a request for comment.

Multiple Chinese students are or have been members of the CCP

The new AAF report revealed that multiple Chinese students now at U.S. universities had been members of the Chinese Communist Party, including holding leadership positions inside the local CCP branches of their Chinese universities. The CCP, a Marxist-Leninist party, won the Chinese civil war under the leadership of Mao Zedong, who ruled the country after establishing the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Some reports say an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China.

Also named in the AAF report was a Chinese scientist who had worked at an American university and who had been a leader within the CCP-controlled China Democratic League (CDL).

The CIA assessed as far back as 1957 that the CDL has “played a leading role under the CCP” in the Chinese government, and argued that “there is little if anything to distinguish between the doctrines of the CDL and CCP.” The CIA said that the CDL “is believed to serve clandestinely the interests of the Chinese Communists in some areas where diplomatic representation is not established and where Communist activities as such would meet with local government opposition.”

The U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2018 assessed that the CDL was a “United Front-Affiliated Organization.” The House Select Committee on the CCP said that “United Front work is a unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations that the CCP uses to shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward the PRC and to gain access to advanced foreign technology.”

The CCP State Council in 2021 praised the CDL, with top CCP officials congratulating the CDL and the State Council, saying that “the CDL has made important contributions to the great cause of China's revolution, development, and reform, as well as the development of the united front work and the cause of multiparty cooperation.”

The AAF report also highlighted one of the Chinese student’s praise for former CCP leader Deng Xiaoping and current CCP leader Xi Jinping, and pointed out that another Chinese scientist now at a U.S. university underwent a Marxist training program prior to coming to the United States.

Links to the Thousand Talents program aimed at stealing U.S. research

Multiple Chinese students with links to the CCP’s Thousand Talents program also appeared in the AAF report. The DOJ in 2020 stated that “China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruitment plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security.”

The DOJ also said that “these talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information.”

The White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing said in 2018 that “China’s talent recruitment strategically complements China’s efforts to target emerging high technology industries” and that the CCP programs “include the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Hundred Talents Plan.”

The AAF report also showed that a Chinese scientist had links to the CCP’s Hundred Talents program.

The Justice Department in 2020 charged Zhengdong Cheng, a Chinese national, for allegedly seeking to defraud NASA and “leverage NASA grant resources to further the research of Chinese institutions.” The DOJ specifically said the Chinese defendant “participated in the PRC’s Hundred Talents Plan.” Cheng eventually pleaded guilty to lying to Texas A&M University after revealing his working relationship with a Chinese university and at least one business in China. Guangdong, one of the confirmed businesses Cheng was working with, is managed by the People’s Republic of China.

Local outlet KBTX reported that Cheng will not serve any more jail time, as he has already spent 13 months in jail. Cheng was ordered to pay restitution to NASA, in addition to a criminal fine.

The DOJ added: “The Chinese Talent Plans are programs established by the Chinese government to recruit individuals with access to or knowledge of foreign technology or intellectual property. Through these plans, the Chinese government has created a significant financial incentive for foreign, talented individuals to transfer international technology and intellectual property to China, licitly or otherwise.”

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in 2020 that “China’s government runs myriad programs to bring Chinese students and scholars living in the United States back to China temporarily to engage in scientific activities relevant to its economic and military modernization” and that “one prominent program” — the Chunhui Program — “targets high-profile Chinese scholars appointed to teaching positions at prominent universities.”

Yet another Chinese scientist working at an American university had been mentored by the now-former director of the Chinese National Office of the Recruitment Program of Global Experts, the AAF report showed.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee assessed in 2019 that “the Chinese government has refined its centrally organized foreign talent recruitment plans into a strategy to ‘use talent to strengthen the country’ by targeting the specific technology sectors” and said that the “Recruitment Program of Global Experts” was another name for the Thousand Talents program.

"Deep roots in the military and defense industry," House committee says

The new AAF report also highlighted that numerous Chinese scientists placed in American schools had previously attended Chinese universities with troubling histories, including multiple Chinese schools closely tied to the Chinese military and China’s defense sector.

Some of the Chinese students now in the U.S. had even previously attended Northwestern Polytechnical University and Beihang University — considered to be among the CCP’s so-called “Seven Sons of National Defense.”

The House Select Committee on China assessed in 2024 that the Seven Sons are “leading universities with deep roots in the military and defense industry, subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.” The House committee said the Chinese ministry “drives the Party’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy and the integration of civilian industries and cutting-edge technologies into the PRC’s military and security ecosystems.”

“These universities are ‘defense science, technology, and industry work units’ and play a crucial role in defense research and development,” the House committee added. “As many as half of the PhD graduates from the Seven Sons go on to work in the PRC’s defense sector, and they spend about half of their research budgets on projects with clear military applications.”

A host of the schools previously attended by the Chinese students are also “co-supervised” by China’s State Administration for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND). The SASTIND schools attended by the Chinese scientists in the AAF report include Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan University, Xidian University, Dalian University of Technology, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Sichuan University, and the South China University of Technology.

The House committee said in 2024 that SASTIND is “an arm of the Chinese government whose stated purposes include ‘strengthen[ing] military forces with additional personnel and more advanced equipment’ and which seeks to leverage these universities for defense purposes.”

The Chinese students employed at American universities and highlighted in the AAf report had also attended the Ocean University of China, the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Nankai University, and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Ocean University is also on the Pentagon’s blacklist as being among “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activity.”

The House Select Committee on the CCP in 2024 also said the Beijing Institute is a “problematic Chinese institution.”

Nature Magazine assessed that Nankai University was among “the leading collaborators with the People's Liberation Army” and among the “top five domestic collaborators” with the PLA, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranking number one, Peking University as number two, and Nankai coming in at number three.

The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences was added to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security’s “Unverified List” (UVL) in 2022. The bureau said that “these foreign persons” — including the Chinese university — “are added to the UVL because BIS or federal officials acting on BIS's behalf were unable to verify their bona fides ( i.e., legitimacy and reliability relating to the end use and end user of items subject to the Export Administration Regulations) through the completion of an end-use check.”

The CCP-led Chinese Academy of Sciences “directly manages” the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. The Bureau of Industry and Security has designated a number of institutes within the Chinese Academy of Sciences, including the Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, the Institute of Physics, the Key Laboratory for Quantum Information, the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, the Institute of Microelectronics, the National Time Service Center, and the Aerospace Information Research Institute.

Blacklisted Huawei operations "contrary to U.S. national security," Commerce Dep't says

The new AAF report also pointed out that multiple Chinese students working at American universities had previously collaborated on projects with researchers at the Chinese tech giant Huawei, including working with researchers at the Internal Cybersecurity Lab at Huawei.

The Commerce Department concluded in 2019 that “Huawei is engaged in activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests and its non-U.S. affiliates pose a significant risk of involvement in activities contrary to the national security of the United States.” The FCC added Huawei to its blacklist as well.

Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO and daughter of the company’s co-founder, was arrested by Canadian authorities in December 2018 at the request of the U.S., indicted in the Eastern District of New York in January 2019, and charged with bank fraud and wire fraud as well as conspiracy to commit both. She was allowed to walk free by the Biden Administration in 2021.

More students have links to blacklisted Chinese military companies

The AAF report also pointed out that a Chinese scientist now working at an American university had previously worked at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a CCP defense conglomerate blacklisted by the U.S. government. The Chinese state-owned military company is considered to be among the largest defense companies in the world.

A key AVIC subsidiary known as the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation, or CATIC, has also been considered a U.S. national security threat since 1990. Then-President George H.W. Bush issued an order in January 1990 that concluded CATIC “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States of America.”

The House select committee on China warned in 1998 about AVIC and its subsidiary CATIC, and the Government Accountability Office in 1996 detailed a scheme by CATIC to get U.S.-based McDonnell Douglas to “co-produce 40 MD-80 and MD-90 aircraft in China for the country’s domestic ‘trunk’ routes.”

CATIC was charged by the Justice Department in 1999 with violating the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act “regarding details of a 1994 sale of American machining equipment, some of which was diverted to a Chinese military site.”

The Commerce Department said in 2001 that TAL Industries was allegedly part of the "conspiracy" to export machine tools from the U.S. to CATIC.

The State Department said in 2002 that most of the charges related to CATIC were dismissed, but that "TAL Industries Inc., however, was convicted of violating the EAA and was sentenced on May 11, 2001, to five years of corporate probation" and "payment of a $1 million fine."

Relationships include atomic weapons research

The AVIC website in 2015 made it clear that its business units included “defense” as well as aviation. The “AVIC Evolution” section said the company was the successor to the Chinese government’s Ministry of Aerospace Industry. AVIC has supported Russia during its war with Ukraine. Now-former Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu had previously been a board member of AVIC Avionics Equipment.

AVIC and its subsidiaries were blacklisted by the Pentagon in 2020 for being “Chinese Military Companies Operating in the United States.” AVIC Avionics was also sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2021 and placed on the “Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List.”

The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security assessed in 2020 that the Chinese center had been “determined by the U.S. Government to be acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States [...] on the basis of their procurement of U.S.-origin items for activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

The blacklist added that the Chinese center is “operated by, or directly affiliated with, the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, which is the technology complex responsible for the research, development and testing of China's nuclear weapons.”

“AAF’s goal in this research is to take America’s discussion of the threat posed by China academics from somewhat academic macro-level discussions — of which there are plenty — and crystalize it into specific actionable examples of men and women who have infiltrated sensitive parts of the military research infrastructure in the United States and spur policymakers to address the problem,” the AAF report said.

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