Harvard’s CCP Ties Under Scrutiny

Following the Trump administration’s recent action to curb Harvard University’s international admissions and vet Chinese nationals studying in the United States, 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 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 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 and their children.

The university has also 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.

According to Harvard’s website, 27 percent—or about 7,000 people of its 2024–2025 enrollment—are international students; one-fifth of those are Chinese.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

—Leo Timm, Stacy Robinson

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