'Threat to national security': House calls on Purdue to release info on Chinese students

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The U.S. House Select Committee connected the Chinese Communist Party sent Purdue President Mung Chiang and 5 different assemblage presidents a missive this week, demanding accusation connected students from China and their probe connected U.S. campuses.

“America’s pupil visa strategy has go a Trojan equine for Beijing,” said the missive released Wednesday, signed by Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar, R-2, the president of the House committee, “providing unrestricted entree to our apical probe institutions and posing a nonstop menace to our nationalist security.”

The missive said U.S. universities are beholden to the tuition from planetary students, peculiarly those from China, but that the beingness of Chinese nationalist students jeopardizes nationalist security.

“The quality assemblage has warned that American campuses are 'soft targets' for espionage and intelligence spot theft. The U.S. Department of Justice has further raised concerns that 'international students’ motives aren’t conscionable to larn but to stock that quality with overseas superpowers to spot a competitory advantage,'" the missive said.

A Purdue spokesperson has not responded to attempts for remark Friday morning.

China's reaction

Beijing connected Thursday demanded protections for Chinese students successful the United States aft the legislature sheet asked the universities to manus implicit the elaborate accusation connected their students, according to the Associated Press.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Chinese students relationship for astir one-fourth of each planetary students successful the United States, according to AP, and that their activities person promoted “the economical prosperity and technological improvement of the U.S.”

“This is successful the involvement of some parties,” Mao told reporters astatine a regular briefing, AP said. “We impulse the U.S. to halt overstretching the conception of nationalist security, efficaciously support the morganatic rights and interests of Chinese students, and not enforce discriminatory restrictive measures connected Chinese students.”

Citing a 2024 Harvard study, the U.S. House Select Committee connected the CCP missive besides said, "Only 25% of Chinese nationalist postgraduate students mean to immigrate to the United States oregon different occidental state aft completing their postgraduate programs.”

But of the 4 options successful the Harvard study, "Chinese Graduate Students' Experience of U.S. Higher Education Through Covid and U.S.-China Tensions," astir fractional of the respondents answered they were, “Likely to enactment successful the U.S. oregon different Western state for astatine slightest a fewer years aft graduation, oregon for their archetypal post-graduation job.”

The survey interviewed conscionable 45 postdoctoral oregon postgraduate students, .00015% of the 300,000 Chinese nationalist students studying successful the United States, according to the study.

Purdue has a colonisation of 2,043 Chinese nationalist students, according to outpouring 2025 online information from Purdue, astir 3.52% of the university’s wide population. Of that, 1,340 are postgraduate students, 10.37% of the postgraduate pupil population.

At Purdue, planetary students wage lone $310 dollars much than out-of-state students. The yearly tuition of an out-of-state pupil with 8 oregon much recognition hours is $28,794, compared to the $29,104 an planetary pupil successful the aforesaid bracket would pay, according to Purdue bursar's bureau data.

The presidents of Carnegie Mellon, Stanford University, the University of Illinois, the University of Maryland and the University of Southern California besides received the aforesaid letter, according to a property merchandise from the House Select Committee connected the CCP. The missive did not authorities wherefore these universities were chosen.

As of Friday morning, nary of the different universities has publically issued a statement. Moolenaar's bureau besides did not instrumentality comment.

What accusation does the committee seek?

The missive asks for accusation astir the students that includes:

• a database of each universities that Chinese nationalist students antecedently attended;

• their sources of tuition funding;

• the benignant of probe they are conducting;

• a database of laboratories and probe initiatives wherever they presently work;

• a country-by-country breakdown of applicants, admittances, and enrollments astatine the university;

• whether the assemblage has policies to forestall overseas nationals from moving connected projects tied to U.S. authorities grants (e.g., Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation funded research);

• restrictions connected Chinese nationals enrolling successful export-controlled coursework (e.g., precocious semiconductor engineering, quantum computing, AI, and aerospace engineering);

• and what percent of Chinese graduates from the assemblage stay successful the United States, and what percent instrumentality to China.

This nonfiction primitively appeared connected Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue University urged to merchandise info connected Chinese students by House