ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The University of Michigan has come under the spotlight for its involvement with Chinese foreign nationals, whether it be students or visiting scholars.
Gifts and contracts.
Earlier this year, the Americans For Public Trust nonprofit reported that U.S. colleges such as the University of Michigan had received nearly $60 billion in money over the past decades in gifts and contracts from foreign countries, many of which are “long-standing adversaries and enemies of the U.S.”
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Americans For Public Trust stated that there were many ways foreign money can be funneled to American universities but said the “overwhelming majority” was through gifts or contracts.
On April 28, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the University of Michigan was one of 11 universities they filed an open records request with to get the information on foreign donors. The Washington Free Beacon reported U-M’s response was that it would take months of searching and more than $1,500 in fees to provide an answer.
The Trump administration gets involved.
That should change as President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 23 that would strictly enforce reporting of foreign gifts to U.S. college, which the executive order stated had not been enforced by previous administrations.
The executive order stated one study found that from 2010 to 2016, American universities had failed to report half of their reportable foreign gifts. Trump stated in his first term, his administration investigated 19 campuses from 2019-2021 and found the universities had not reported $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed foreign funds.
Americans For Public Trust reported that a U.S. Senate subcommittee report in 2019 found 70% of U.S. colleges failed to comply with the law.
China and U.S. colleges.
In 2024 alone, China had given $176.6 million to U.S. colleges, according to the report. Other countries on that list with much smaller dollar amounts included Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Russia.
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“Foreign actors may use their funding of U.S. schools to buy influence, sow discord and anti-American propaganda, and to steal invaluable intellectual property and research,” the Americans For Public Trust report stated.
The University of Michigan has received unwanted attention in the past year over the conduct of Chinese nationals it has allowed to be a part of its staff or students. Haoxiang Gao, a Chinese national, was a college student attending U-M when he registered to vote and voted in the 2024 presidential election. On June 3, he was charged with crimes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. It was reported that Gao has since fled back to China.
On June 3, the U.S. Attorney’s Office stated Chinese nationals Yunqing Jian and Zunyong Liu were charged with trying to smuggle a noxius fungus capable of wiping out crops and causing cancer in humans into the country so they could work on it at U-M labs.