The Chinese Communist government on Friday condemned the United States for ending Harvard University’s much-abused international student program.
“China-U.S. education cooperation benefits both sides. China opposes politicizing education cooperation,” insisted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.
“What the U.S. seeks to do will undoubtedly hurt its own image and reputation in the world,” she said.
“China will firmly protect the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese students and scholars overseas,” she said.
Mao was very reluctant to discuss China’s politicization of the Harvard student program, cited by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the reason for shutting the program down.
“Let me reiterate that China opposes politicizing education cooperation and groundlessly attacking and vilifying China. The sanctions you mentioned are illicit and should be lifted immediately,” she muttered when a reporter asked about Chinese slave-labor officials receiving Harvard training in defiance of U.S. sanctions in 2020.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s daughter Xi Mingze attended Harvard as a foreign student, graduating in 2014. Xi Mingzhe’s identity was kept secret during her time on the campus, as the New Yorker detailed in a 2015 profile of the mystery student:
On a sunny morning last May, a member of Harvard’s graduating class received her diploma and prepared to depart from campus as quietly as she had arrived. Xi Mingze—the only child of Xi Jinping, the President of China, and his wife, the celebrity soprano Peng Liyuan—crossed the podium at Adams House, the dorm that housed Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger. She had studied psychology and English and lived under an assumed name, her identity known only to a limited number of faculty and close friends—“less than ten,” according to Kenji Minemura, a correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun, who attended the commencement and wrote about Xi’s experience in America.
The New Yorker went on to cite research that found Chinese nationals who study abroad tend to remain loyal to the Chinese Communist dictatorship and support its policies without reservation, so those hoping Harvard’s investment of a priceless student slot on Xi Mingzhe might have produced an influential new advocate for freedom and human rights are likely to be disappointed.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said when she ordered the university to terminate its Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) on Thursday.
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused,” she said.
Noem asked Harvard to provide “information about the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus,” and warned the university it could lose its SEVP program if it did not comply. Harvard chose to lose the program instead of furnishing the requested information.
“They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” Noem said.
DHS accused Harvard’s leadership of creating “an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment.”
“Many of these agitators are foreign students,” the department noted.
“Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide,” the DHS statement on Thursday said.
This was a reference to Harvard repeatedly offering accommodations and training to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). The XPCC was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in July 2020 for “serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which reportedly include mass arbitrary detention and severe physical abuse.”
The targets of that abuse were the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim population of Turkic ethnicity that has been ruthlessly oppressed by the Chinese government. Millions of Uyghurs have been herded into concentration camps so huge they could be seen from orbit. Even when they are not facing physical and psychological torture in China’s camps, the Uyghurs live in towns and cities that have been turned into virtual dungeons by pervasive surveillance technology.
They are routinely used for forced labor by Chinese companies, a practice that led to the passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in 2021. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo determined that China’s treatment of the Uyghurs met the definition of genocide in January 2021.
The XPCC is a paramilitary organization controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Although it is nominally an economic unit, it is organized in divisions and regiments like a military operation. Under the leadership of its First Political Commissar Chen Quanguo, who was also the head of the Communist Party in Xinjiang, the XPCC played a role in imposing surveillance, detention, and indoctrination programs against the Uyghurs.
House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party chair John Moolenaar (R-MI), Education and Workforce Committee chair Tim Walbarg (R-MI), and House Republican Leadership chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) sent a letter to Harvard on Monday demanding “transparency and accountability” on the university’s dealings with hostile foreign governments, including China and Iran.
The letter mentioned Harvard’s “repeated training of members of the XPCC,” and noted that Harvard provided services to the Chinese paramilitary group after it was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2020. The most recent documented instance of such services being provided was in 2024.
The earliest known instances were in 2019, which the representatives noted was “well after there was significant public reporting, and confirmation by the U.S. government and United Nations, of mass detentions, relentless surveillance, and gross human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.”
“Harvard trained members of a sanctioned Chinese paramilitary group responsible for genocide, and its researchers partnered with Chinese military universities on DoD-funded research and worked with researchers funded by the Iranian regime,” said Moolenaar.
Moolenaar was referring to Harvard researchers working on advanced technology projects, including some with artificial intelligence applications, that were funded by the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). One of the Chinese institutions in questions was Tsinghua University, the alma mater of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
“These are not isolated incidents — they represent a disturbing pattern that puts U.S. national security at risk,” he said.
“No American university or college should be assisting the Chinese Communist Party in expanding its influence, oppressing American citizens, or undermining U.S. national security,” said Walberg.
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